The study of superficial phenomena with the ionoluminescence cine-camera

Abstract

We describe an apparatus in order to analyse the first layers of a metallic or insulating solid. This instrument, based on the atomic ionluminescence phenomenon, gives, like a cine-camera, a characteristic picture of each sputtered layer, a few angstroms thick. Moreover, when several elements are present in the target, it is possible to obtain, almost at the same time, the characteristic pictures of two different elements that we want to locate at the surface. So as to show the possibilities of this apparatus, we present some photographs taken from a film which correspond to the superficial concentration of the two elements of a Al/NaCl target. We explain the results using the «back-scattering» and «forward-scattering» processes.