Speaker
Description
The Ion Beam Center (IBC) at the Helmholtz-Zentrum Dresden-Rossendorf (HZDR) is a leading European user facility for both fundamental and application-oriented research in physics and materials science using ion beams. The IBC operates a comprehensive suite of accelerators, implanters, and low-energy machines, offering broad, focused, and highly charged ion beams across a wide energy range—from 25 eV to 50 MeV—and covering almost all stable elements. These facilities support a wide range of ion beam analysis (IBA) and ion beam modification techniques, made available free of charge to users from academia, while partnerships with industry are facilitated through the HZDR spin-off, HZDR Innovation GmbH. The IBC’s research portfolio focuses on modifying and analyzing novel materials for applications in information technology, electronics, and energy systems. Ion beams serve as a powerful, universal tool for surface and interface modification, enabling precise tuning of material properties at the nanoscale. A key strength of the IBC lies in its broad portfolio of IBA methods, which enable quantitative, often standard-free, compositional analysis and depth profiling of surface layers with sub-micrometer resolution. Techniques such as Rutherford Backscattering Spectrometry (RBS), Elastic Recoil Detection (ERD), and Proton Induced X-ray Emission (PIXE) are routinely employed to study ultra-shallow implantation profiles, interface inter-diffusion, diffusion barriers, and implantation-induced damage. Recent instrumentation upgrades have extended the spatial resolution of IBA significantly: for example, by integrating IBA capabilities into a Helium Ion Microscope (HIM), where He or Ne beams can be focused to below 1 nm. In this setup, time-of-flight (TOF) detection in RBS mode has achieved lateral resolutions of 100 nm, and Secondary Ion Mass Spectrometry (SIMS) using Ne ions has pushed resolution even further, below 100 nm. These advances open new frontiers for high-resolution, spatially resolved materials characterization. This lecture will provide an overview of the current research activities and methodological developments at the IBC, with a particular focus on recent advances in ion beam analysis and modification for applications in surface engineering and emerging material systems such as 2D materials.
