The external scanning proton microprobe of Firenze: A comprehensive description

An external proton scanning microbeam setup is installed on the -30 degrees line of the new 3 MV tandem accelerator in Firenze; the most relevant features of the line, such as detection setup for IBA measurements, target viewing system, beam diagnostic and transport are described here. With our facility we can work with a beam spot on sample better than 10 mu m full-width half-maximum (FWHM) and an intensity of some nanoamperes. Standard beam exit windows are silicon nitride (Si3N4) TEM membranes, 100 nm thick and 0.5 x 0.5 mm(2) wide; we also successfully performed measurements using membranes 1 x 1 mm(2) wide, 100 run thick, and 2 x 2 mm(2) wide, 200 and 500 nm thick. Exploiting the yield of Si X-rays produced by the beam in the exit window as an indirect measurement of the charge, a beam charge monitor system was implemented. The analytical capabilities of the microbeam have been extended by integrating a two-detector PIXE setup with BS and PIGE detectors; the external scanning proton microprobe in Firenze is thus a powerful instrument to fully characterize samples by ion beam analysis, through the simultaneous collection of PIXE, PIGE and BS elemental maps. Its characteristics can make it often competitive with traditional in vacuum microbeam for measurements of thick targets. (C) 2007 Elsevier B.V. All rights reserved.