The study of surfaces using Ion beams

The study of surfaces has progressed by the development of techniques which use different probing species in the form of electrons, ions and photons. Specialisation within the use of each probe has resulted in the subsequent development of methods of analysis tuned to obtain specific information about a surface. In this presentation the various uses of ion scattering spectrometry over a wide range of energies will be reviewed to illustrate how it has been successfully used to yield structural and compositional information of the surface atomic layer and the near surface region.