50 years of ion channeling in materials science

In the early days of ion beam analysis, i.e. the early 60s, channeling was discovered and brought to maturity via a combined effort in experimental, computational and theoretical research. It was soon realized that the probability for nuclear interaction (such as nuclear scattering, nuclear reactions, ionization followed by X-ray emission...) would significantly decrease when steering the ion beam along a crystallographic direction of a single crystal. Hence, this effect would be optimally suited to investigate a wide range of materials properties related to their crystal structure, such as defects, elastic strain, the lattice site of impurities, as well as phonon-related properties. In this paper, I will briefly review some of the pioneering work, which led to the discovery and theoretical understanding of ion channeling. Subsequently, a number of applications will be discussed where the strength of the ion beam analysis technique allows deducing information which is often hardly (or not) attainable by other techniques. Throughout the paper, I will reflect on the future of channeling in materials research, and pay special attention to potential pitfalls, challenges and opportunities. (C) 2015 Elsevier B.V. All rights reserved.