Electronic stopping powers for Be, Ca and Ti in SiC

Abstract

Energy loss of ions in matter is fundamental to many applications dependent on the transport of ions in matter. In spite of a long history of studies, the electronic stopping power is not adequately described over all ranges of ions, energies and targets, particularly in the case of heavy ions or compound targets. In this study, stopping powers for Be, Ca and Ti in SiC have been determined using a time-of-flight energy elastic recoil detection analysis (ToF-E ERDA) set-up. In transmission geometry, the energy loss of heavy ions in a self-supporting SiC foil was measured over a continuous range of energies using the ToF data that was tagged by a Si detector with and without the stopping foil. By essentially calibrating the Si detector for each channel over the measured energy region based on TOF spectrometry, measurement uncertainties of less than 4% are achieved. In comparing with the experimental data, both the SRIM (stopping and range of ions in matter) code and the binary theory provide reasonable predictions.