Determining the Relative Concentration of Deuterium Implanted in Beryllium Based on the Elastic Peak Electron Spectroscopy

The relative concentration of deuterium implanted in beryllium is determined on the basis of the elastic peak electron spectroscopy. To consistently determine the energy spectra of reflected electrons, the method of partial intensities is used, which is based on solving the boundary problem for the transport equation by the invariant imbedding method. The differential inelastic scattering cross sections are reconstructed using a fitting procedure based on the multiple solution of the direct problem with fitting parameters. High efficiency of the fitting procedure is achieved through constructing a numerical procedure for solving the equations for partial intensities, a technique that combines accuracy and extremely high computation speed. Differential cross sections of inelastic scattering are obtained both for the near-surface area and for a homogeneous area distant from the surface. The differential inelastic scattering cross sections have been calculated for both pure beryllium and beryllium samples subjected to deuterium implantation. The relative concentrations of deuterium in beryllium have been determined, the values of which are equal to 0.12±0.03 (for a dose of 55 deuterium atoms per square Angstrom) and 0.15±0.03 (for a dose of 201 deuterium atoms per square Angstrom). The obtained results indicate that the developed method has made it possible to achieve an order of magnitude better sensitivity of determining the relative concentrations of hydrogen isotopes in compounds in comparison with the previously existing methods.