Biomedical Applications and Instrumental Implications of Ion Microprobe

An effort has been made to construct a heavy-ion scanning microprobe. Some preliminary results on beam-optics are presented, and a new technique for measuring the beam spot size is reported here. The performance of ion beams as a source for characteristic x-ray production has been studied. As a justification of this work, a brief comparison is made between the x-ray excitation probabilities of protons and heavy ions on the one hand, and that of electrons and x-rays on the other. The present work is a first step toward the future construction of a high resolution ion microprobe which would have a beam size smaller than 1 ¿m.