ENERGY-DEPENDENCE OF ELASTIC ELECTRON BACKSCATTERING FROM SOLIDS

The theory of electron transport in amorphous materials predicts multi ple maxima in the energy dependence of the elastic reflection probabil ity for certain solids and experimental geometries. In particular, two maxima are expected in the energy dependence of the intensity of the elastic peak measured in the geometry of the cylindrical mirror analyz er for medium atomic-number elements. This prediction is confirmed exp erimentally in the present work. It has been found that the energy dep endence of the elastic peak height better agrees with the theoretical energy dependence of the backscattered intensity than does the area of the elastic peak. This observation can be explained in terms of the t ransmission properties of the analyzer used.