Development of external coincidence ERDA: Hydrogen analysis of moist samples

Herein, we describe new developments in the external coincidence elastic recoil detection analysis (coincidence ERDA) setup at the University of Göttingen. Our work aims to realize the quantitative evaluation of hydrogen in atmospheric pressure. The details of the developed device for the external coincidence ERDA, as well as the first spectra of the self-standing polymer foils are presented. We additionally prepared "wet" PVA foils with different water contents, and performed an external coincidence ERDA analysis. Using this setup, the increase in clear hydrogen and oxygen was observed as the foil contains more water. Since the external coincidence ERDA setup can offer greater flexibility for a variety of environments and the sample itself, this technique leads to a new method of moist sample characterization, and has potential for use in various in-situ/operand analyses.