Status of ion microbeam facility at the Institute of Physics, Bhubaneswar, India

An ion microbeam facility has been set up at one of the beam lines of the 3 MV tandem Pelletron accelerator facility at IOP, Bhubaneswar. This is the first facility of its kind in India, having potential applications in the growing fields involving semiconductors, materials science, biology, archeology and environmental science, from both scientific and industrial points of view. So far we have achieved a spatial resolution of ∼3 μm with a beam current of about 80 pA using a 3 MeV He+ beam. A brief description of various components along with the experimental setup is given. As first applications of this microprobe, elemental maps, obtained by RBS measurements on epitaxial gold silicide islands grown on Si(1 1 0) surfaces, and results of mass transport in ion beam interaction with a Ag(1 1 1) epitaxial layer are presented