Beam scanning control and data acquisition on the Sumy nuclear microprobe

A system of beam scanning control and data acquisition has been developed for a nuclear scanning microprobe at the Sumy Institute of Applied Physics, Ukraine. The system provides efficient data collection from a number of detectors (up to 5) simultaneously for several microanalytical techniques such as μRBS, μPIXE and secondary electron imaging. A set of units with built-in microcontrollers joined by a high-speed serial bus serves to maintain special synchronization signals. A detailed description is given of the scanning control which is synchronized with the data acquisition.