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Published December 18, 2014 | public
Journal Article

Accurate analysis of shallowly implanted solar wind ions by SIMS backside depth profiling

Abstract

A method to quantitatively determine the fluences of shallowly-implanted solar wind ions returned to Earth by the Genesis Discovery mission is described. Through backside depth-profiling, we recover nearly complete depth profiles of implanted solar wind for several nonvolatile elements, including Mg, Al, Ca, Cr, and, to a lesser extent, Na, in silicon targets that collected bulk solar wind and solar wind from specific velocity regimes. We also determine the fluences of the volatile elements C, N, and O in silicon targets that collected bulk solar wind. By the use of appropriately calibrated ion implanted standards, fluences as low as 2 × 10^(10) atoms cm^(−2) can be determined with precision and accuracy typically in the few percent range. Specific approaches to sample preparation, sputtering artifacts during depth profiling by secondary ion mass spectrometry, and quantification including the production of ion implant standards are discussed.

Additional Information

© 2014 Elsevier B.V. Received 29 March 2014. Received in revised form 1 October 2014. Accepted 2 October 2014. Available online 13 October 2014. Editor: K. Mezger. We appreciate the expertise and cooperation of the curatorial team at NASA Johnson Space Center in cleaning Genesis collector fragments prior to preparation for backside profiling. Detailed reviews by Andrew Davis and Ulrich Ott are gratefully acknowledged. This work was supported by grants from the NASA Laboratory Analysis of Returned Samples (LARS) program. V. Heber thanks the NASA for financial support and Rainer Wieler (ETH Zurich, Switzerland) for the discussion and correction of the paper and for allowing her towork for a part of this project as a Visiting Scientist in his laboratory. The UCLA ion microprobe facility is partially supported by a grant from the NSF Instrumentation and Facilities program. The high accuracy implantations were performed in CSNSM Orsay with the help of D. Ledu and F. Fortuna and supported by the CNRS interdisciplinary program (Défi Instrumentation aux limites), the ANR grant 11-BS56-0026 and through CSNSM-UCLA collaboration PICS CNRS grant "MicMet-LA". The nuclear reaction analysis was performed with the help of E. Briand and J-J Ganem under the Convention for SAFIR@ALTAÏS between The Université Pierre et Marie Curie and The University of Namur.

Additional details

Created:
August 22, 2023
Modified:
October 19, 2023