ABSTRACT
This chapter discusses the techniques which employ this method to desorb and analyse surface atoms such as the atom probe, field ion microscopy and field emission microscopy. Since ions have a mass which is several orders of magnitude greater than that of either electrons or photons, the potential for damage using even the lightest ion, the hydrogen ion or proton, is considerable. Ion scattering spectroscopy originated in the 1950s when Brunnee demonstrated that alkali ions incident on molybdenum surfaces showed maximum energies predicted for single, binary elastic collisions. Backscattering experiments involve bombarding a surface with these alpha particles and determining the energy and number of particles scattered in the backward direction after colliding with atoms in the near surface of the material. Ion scattering spectroscopy relies on incident ions being reflected by the surface atom layers while Rutherford backscattering detects both the intensity and energy of ions scattered from the surface and from within the bulk.
