Eur. Phys. J. Plus (2021) 136: 969
https://doi.org/10.1140/epjp/s13360-021-01954-3

Regular Article

Fluorine depth profiling based on the ¹⁹F(p,p’γ)¹⁹F excitation function

¹ Laboratório de Instrumentação, Engenharia Biomédica e Física da Radiação (LIBPhys-UNL), Caparica, Portugal
² Departamento de Física, Faculdade de Ciências e Tecnologia da Universidade Nova de Lisboa, Monte da Caparica, 2892-516, Caparica, Portugal
³ HEI-Lab: Digital Human-Environment Interaction Lab, Lusófona University, Lisbon, Portugal
⁴ Laboratório de Instrumentação e Física Experimental de Partículas, 1649-016, Lisboa, Portugal
⁵ Departamento de Física, Faculdade de Ciências da Universidade de Lisboa, Campo Grande, 1749-003, Lisboa, Portugal
⁶ Campus Tecnológico e Nuclear do Instituto Superior Técnico (CTN-IST), Estrada Nacional 10 (km 139,7), 2695-066 LRS, Bobadela, Loures, Portugal

^a jdc@fct.unl.pt

Received: 6 July 2021
Accepted: 9 September 2021
Published online: 24 September 2021

Abstract

Ion beam analysis of fluorine has applications in research on teeth and bones, materials science, geochemistry and archaeometry. A novel PIGE (particle induced gamma-ray emission) standard free methodology for fluorine content determination for in-depth heterogeneous samples based on the excitation function of the ¹⁹F(p,p’γ)¹⁹F nuclear reaction is presented. New precise cross section measurements of this reaction in the proton energy range 2.1 to 4.1 MeV have been performed. In addition, the ERYA-Profiling code, a computer program specially developed for PIGE analysis of in-depth heterogeneous samples, employed this new excitation function in a case study where different fluorine simulated depth profiles probed the capability of insight into fluorine distributions in a given sample, showing the potential of PIGE analysis.