Monte Carlo simulation of x-ray emission by kilovolt electron bombardment

E. ACOSTA; X. LLOVET; COLEONI, ENRIQUE; A. RIVEROS; F. SALVAT

JOURNAL OF APPLIED PHYSICS

AMER INST PHYSICS

Lugar: New York; Año: 1998 vol. 83 p. 6038 - 6049

0021-8979

A physical model for the simulation of x-ray emission spectra from samples irradiated with kilovolt electron beams is proposed. Inner shell ionization by electron impact is described by means of total cross sections evaluated from an optical-data model. A double differential cross section is proposed for bremsstrahlung emission, which reproduces the radiative stopping powers derived from the partial wave calculations of Kissel, Quarles and Pratt @At. Data Nucl. Data Tables 28, 381 ~1983!#. These ionization and radiative cross sections have been introduced into a general-purpose Monte Carlo code, which performs simulation of coupled electron and photon transport for arbitrary materials. To improve the efficiency of the simulation, interaction forcing, a variance reduction technique, has been applied for both ionizing collisions and radiative events. The reliability of simulated x-ray spectra is analyzed by comparing simulation results with electron probe measurements.