APPLICATION OF A NEW MONTE-CARLO SIMULATION ALGORITHM TO ELECTRON-PROBE MICROANALYSIS

A new general purpose code for Monte Carlo simulation of electron-phot on showers is applied to a variety of electron transport problems invo lving electron energies in the keV range. The underlying scattering mo del combines elastic scattering cross-sections calculated by the parti al wave method with inelastic cross-sections obtained from Liljequist' s generalized oscillator strength model. The reliability of the trajec tory generation algorithm has been verified through a comparison of si mulation results with measured backscattering coefficients and spatial dose distributions, The number of inner-shell ionizations in a trajec tory segment is evaluated by means of various approximate total ioniza tion cross-sections which are commonly used in the literature. Simulat ed depth distributions of ionization, in the form of Phi(rho z)-functi ons, are compared with available data from tracer experiments, Calcula ted ionization distributions for thin films on substrates are presente d.