DEVELOPMENT OF A PC BASED SOFTWARE PACKAGE FOR ION BEAM ANALYSIS

Abstract

A software package, for use on IBM Personal Computers or their compatibles, has been developed for a number of ion beam applications. The software package consists of three parts. The first is a program for the determination of elemental concentrations from particle induced X-ray emission (PIXE) and backscattering spectrometry (BS) measurements. The second is a program for the determination of depth profiles of elemental concentrations from PIXE measurements. The third is for studies of effects of particle size and surface roughness in PIXE and microPIXE analysis. The development of this software package constitutes a part of the development of the NUS ion beam microanalysis facility. Two well-known programs for analysing PIXE and BS data, namely GUPIX and RUMP, respectively, have been incorporated in the program for elemental concentration determination. Information obtained from the part of the program for BS data analysis can be used by the part for PIXE data analysis without any data transfer operation. The program is named NUSDAN, standing for NUS Data ANalysis system The iterative maximum likelihood algorithm is adopted in the program for reconstructing elemental depth profiles from PIXE data. This algorithm has been used in tomography but never before in PIXE depth profiling. The algorithm was tested with simulated as well as experimental data obtained from targets of known profiles. The reconstructed depth profiles matched satisfactorily with the expected ones. The third part of the package is essentially a program for simulating 2D elemental maps in micro-PIXE analysis of inhomogeneous thick target. It can be used for studies of the effects of particle size and surface roughness in PIXE analysis. The results of the simulation of a 2D elemental map for a target were compared to experimental data. Reasonably good agreement was attained.