Ion Beam Analysis

Introduction

Ion Beam Analysis (abbreviated IBA) is a windows-based program for the graphical analysis of data from Rutherford BackScattering (RBS) and Elastic Recoil Detection (ERD) material analysis. It uses a full 32-bit instruction set for rapid calculations. The program can evaluate experiments using any incident ion, at any energy, for any planar target. The Tutorial may be helpful for those unfamiliar with scientific data analysis using mouse-based control. The theme of this package is to allow the user to concentrate on the graphical image of the data, and minimize numerical input from the keyboard, in evaluating ion beam data and rapidly producing a thorough and complete analysis.

Material Analysis Using Ion Beam Analysis

Ion Beam Analysis involves sending high energy ion beams into targets, with RBS detecting the scattered ions while ERD detects the sputtered (knocked-out) target atoms. The two types of analysis are experimentally set up differently to enhance the signal-to-noise of their data. In general, ERD is used to analyze light target atoms, from H to O, while RBS is used to analyze heavier atoms, C to U. The advantage of both techniques is that they are quantitative, without calibration samples. Since both techniques use nuclear scattering, the chemical makeup and electronic binding configurations are second order effects on the scattering. The chemistry of the target atoms is seen in the "stopping power" of the ions (the rate that they lose energy in the target) but not in the major scattering events which is the basis of both techniques.

Summary of Features

The IBA software is fully featured with:

• Identification of elements based on detected particle energy.
• Determination of the areal density of isolated layers from the area of the peak (number of scattered particles). Some nuclear cross-sections are included in the simulation, and this database will be expanded as requested.
• Determination of relative concentration of several elements based on peak height.
• Simulation of the entire specrum for both RBS and ERD scattering. Any number of elements and target layers may be included (limited only by your PC memory).
• Creation of depth scales for each element which may be superimposed on the spectrum.
• Creation of concentration scales for each element which may be superimposed on the spectrum.

(See the IBA Tutorial for illustrations of these features and others. All plots were created with the IBA program, without further editing.)

HARDWARE / SOFTWARE Requirements

The following components are required:

• APL Language: An APL compiler is required. See separate Installation Manuals for details.
• Video card to enable 1280x1024 (16 color) graphics (1MB).
• 8MB memory
• 30 MB of free harddisk space for the APL+IBA software.

The following components are desirable:

• Intel Pentium CPU (75MHz or faster)
• 16MB memory
• Color Printer (e.g. HP-870 Deskjet)
• Monitor capable of handling 1280x1024 graphics.

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