Ion beam analysis of powdered samples

Frequently samples are presented in powdered form, or have for reasons of inhomogeneity to be powdered and thoroughly mixed in order to get a representative sample. In other situations while solid samples may be available, in the case of precious minerals such as diamond, they may be very small so that accurate results can inherently not be obtained. Since these problems frequently present themselves with our interests in nuclear geology, solutions to the problem which does not arise in most other analytical techniques have been sought and now established. Two basic approaches will be described together with the instrumentation developed.