A COMPARISON BETWEEN THE USE OF MEV ION-BEAMS AND SYNCHROTRON RADIATION FOR ELEMENT ANALYSIS

In this contribution, a comparison is made between the use of ion beam s of several MeV and synchrotron radiation of tens of keV for the anal ysis and characterization of a variety of samples. Included in the com parison are the use of beams in the total reflection mode. Also mentio ned are additional techniques with both kinds of incoming beams to ext ract more information from the samples. Such techniques include nuclea r reactions of various kinds, elastic and inelastic scattering with io n beams and the study of near edge structures such as XANES (X-ray abs orption near edge structure) and EXAFS (extended X-ray absorption fine structure) with synchrotron radiation. These latter methods aim at ob taining chemical information from the elements present in the samples.