Depth Profiling of Materials by PIXE

The most commonly used accelerator-based techniques for depth profiling are Rutherford Backscattering (RBS) which will be discussed in Chap. 2, Elastic Recoil Detection (ERD) which will be discussed in Chap. 3, and Nuclear Reaction Analysis (NRA) which will be discussed in Chap. 7. PIXE analysis has the advantage of a very good sensitivity and possible simultaneous detection of all heavier elements. 

The X-ray yield from an infinitesimal volume at depth x, of the elements with n(x) atoms per unit volume is given by  

If Aij is the contribution of the X-ray yield of each slab with unit concentration of the element of interest and i corresponds to the fth energy used, then 

For imaging of different elements in PIXE analysis (which is needed to locate the distribution of elements since the composition varies with position across an image area), there will be variation in the X-ray jdelds i.e., coimtsppm T This effect can be corrected using a method based on combining the jdelds calculated for end-member components in order to make djmamic analysis for quantitative PIXE (Ryan 2001). 

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