Study of the Pd-Rh interdiffusion by three complementary analytical techniques: PIXE, RBS and ToF-SIMS

Pd diffusion in Rh has a great interest in the 103Pd* production intended to brachytherapy, a cancer treatment using radioactive implants. In order to study that diffusion, DC-magnetron sandwich layers of natural Pd and Rh were produced, annealed, and the Pd profiles were measured by ToF-SIMS. Nevertheless, because ToF-SIMS depth profiles suffer from a lack of quantification and depth calibration, the study was completed by RBS, PIXE. The combination of these techniques allowed us to convert the ToF-SIMS depth profiles from an intensity-time to a concentration-depth profile and thus to study the Pd diffusion in Rh.