This introduction is meant to provide background for people who have not yet studied physics. Here we treat ion scattering concepts intuitively, and intend these pages to be an aid for understanding the more technical ‘Principles of MEIS’ section.

The pages below introduce ion scattering and explain generally how it provides information about matter. They discuss how ion scattering is used to determine target composition and how it can determine bulk crystal structure. Lastly, these pages introduce the MEIS technique, and explain how it can be used to probe surface structure.