4. PIXE microprobe analysis

From a technical point of view, one of the main advances of the last twenty years has been the emergence of particle microbeams. Methods for focusing ion beams of a few MeV have been developed, enabling the PIXE method to be implemented on a microscopic scale. By scanning the sample, it is then possible to obtain a point-by-point analysis and thus an elemental chemical map with a spatial resolution of the order of 300 nm for the most powerful probes (see figure 12 ).

In addition to fluorescence techniques, these microprobes can also be used for more specifically nuclear techniques, such as nuclear...