Nanometer Wear Measurement by Ultra-Thin Surface Layer Activation

摘要

The objective was to determine the feasibility of applying the surface layer activation (SLA) technique to measurements of wear or corrosion which are at least two orders of magnitude more precise than any previous applications. Several alternative methods of activating radionuclide markers were studied to determine if they could be used to produce activity distributions with the necessary characteristics for measurements in the nanometer range. Two were based on particle beam bombardment. The results lead to the conclusion that producing ultra-shallow activation profiles is not as difficult as was originally expected, and several of the proposed activation methods are quite feasible.