R. Grotzschel et al., COMPOSITION ANALYSIS OF NDXFEYB THIN-FILMS BY RES AND HEAVY-ION ERDA, Nuclear instruments & methods in physics research. Section B, Beam interactions with materials and atoms, 118(1-4), 1996, pp. 139-143
Thin sputter deposited layers with a nominal composition of Nd2Fe14B (
thickness 120 to 400 nm) on Si/SiO2 were analysed by the combined appl
ication of RBS and heavy ion ERDA, These methods, based on elastic Cou
lomb scattering, are advantageous for composition analysis of thin com
pound layers due to their known cross sections, For high accuracy it i
s necessary that the spectral contributions of each element can be sep
arated from each other and from the substrate background. This is diff
icult for light elements with RBS. The light element concentration how
ever can be measured by ERDA with heavy incident ions, With 200 MeV I-
127 ions from the Munich MP tandem the light elements as well as the F
e recoils were detected using a gas telescope. The Fe peak was used as
cross reference to the RBS measurements. With 35 MeV Cl-35 ions at th
e 5 MV Rossendorf tandem too little energy is transferred to the Fe re
coils to be identified with the Bragg ionisation chamber (BIC) detecto
r. Therefore a thin aluminium layer was evaporated onto the Nd2Fe14B l
ayer. The aluminium peak is well separated both in the RBS and in the
ERDA spectra and is used as cross reference here.