This book provides a comprehensive overview of positron profilometry, specifically focusing on the analysis of defect depth distribution in materials. Positron profilometry plays a crucial role in understanding and characterizing defects in a wide range of materials, including metals, semiconductors, polymers, and ceramics. By analyzing the depth distribution of defects, researchers can gain insights into various material properties, such as crystal structure, defect density, and diffusion behavior. The author's extensive research spanning a period of two decades has primarily centered on subsurface zones. These regions, located beneath the surface and subjected to various surface processes, play a crucial role in generating defect distributions. Three experimental techniques and their data analysis are described in detail: a variable-energy positron beam (VEP) called sometimes a slow positron beam, a technique called implantation profile depth scanning (DSIP), and a sequential etching (SET) technique. The usability of these techniques is illustrated by many examples of measurements by the author and others.

There is no doubt that, when it comes to the study of the structures and defects of materials, there is presently no technique that rivals positron annihilation. The increasing demands for higher accuracy and reliability provide a constant stimulus to the field, and the present work presents the newest and most important scientific discoveries made in the field of positron annihilation. Many important new results concerning positron and positronium studies of nano-materials, defects, porous materials, low-k dielectrics, polymers, liquids, atomic physics and new instrumentation are reported in the present contributions; presented by experts from all over the world. There can be no better way of keeping up with this rapidly advancing field.

This book provides a comprehensive description of the principles and applications of positron and positronium chemistry. Pedagogical and tutorial in nature, it will be ideal for graduate students and researchers in the area of positron annihilation spectroscopy. The contributing authors are authoritative scientists prominent in the frontiers of research, actively pursuing positron annihilation research on chemical and applied systems.

The lifetime of a positron inside a solid is normally less than a fraction of nanosecond. This is a very short time on a human scale, but is long enough to enable the positron to visit an extended region of the material, and to sense the atomic and electronic structure of the environment. Thus, we can inject a positron in a sample to draw from it some signal giving us information on the microscopic properties of the material. This idea has been successfully developed in a number of positron-based techniques of physical analysis, with resolution in energy, momentum, or position. The complex of these techniques is what we call now positron spectroscopy of solids. The field of application of the positron spectroscopy extends from advanced problems of solid-state physics to industrial applications in the area of characterization of high-tech materials. This volume focuses the attention on the physics that can be learned from positron-based methods, but also frames those methods in a wider context including other experimental approaches. It can be considered as a textbook on positron spectroscopy of solids, the sort of book that the newcomer takes for his approach to this field, but also as a useful research tool for the expert.