Construction of a confocal PIXE set-up at the Jožef Stefan Institute and first results

A new confocal PIXE set-up at the Jožef Stefan Institute in Ljubljana was recently designed and built. It consists of a silicon-drift detector, a specially designed polycapillary lens and a snout-alignment interface for precise positioning. It allows detector movement in all directions and therefore precise alignment during the creation of the probing volume and the possibility of simultaneous use of other complementary techniques, including standard μ-PIXE measurements with another X-ray detector. A description of the new set-up is given, as well as a short presentation of the method itself. Two custom-designed types of X-ray lenses were tailored and manufactured for this application, a standard semi-lens and a polycapillary conic collimator; both were characterized and compared within the scope of development of the confocal PIXE system. First results of depth profiling with the beam scanning mode are shown.