Applied muon science: novel perspectives in nano-science

Starting from an intense surface muon beam a tertiary beam of muons with 100% spin polarization and whose energy can be continuously tuned in the keV range was recently developed at PSI. This allows to vary the implantation depth in thin samples in the interval from ∼ 1 nm to a few hundred nm. By means of muon spin rotation/relaxation techniques these low energy particles have been used as novel local probes to study magnetic properties of thin films, near surface regions and multilayered structures.