The recent progress of the high-energy heavy ion nuclear microprobe at the University of North Texas.

The paper reports the recent progress of a high-energy, heavy ion nuclear microprobe facility established at the University of North Texas. The microprobe system is installed on a 3MV NEC 9SDH-2 Pelletron tandem accelerator. A high demagnification factor (∼60) has been achieved with the system, using a probe-forming lens system (from MARC, Melbourne, Australia) with the new Russian quadruplet configuration. The spatial resolution of 2-3 µm has been achieved for 4.0 MeV carbon ions or 9.0 MeV alpha particles with a beam current of ∼ 50-100 pA. Better spatial resolution (approaching one µm) is achievable when an extremely low beam current (100-2000 ions/sec) is used in the applications of IBICC and IBIL. Applications of the analytical techniques with the nuclear microprobe are outlined and discussed. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]