Allotropic effects on the energy loss of swift H+ and He+ ion beams through thin foils

Abstract

We have developed a theoretical treatment and a simulation code to study the energy loss of swift H+ and He+ ion beams interacting with thin foils of different carbon allotropes. The former is based on the dielectric formalism, and the latter combines Monte Carlo with the numerical solution of the motion equation for each projectile to describe its trajectory and interactions through the target. The capabilities of both methods are assessed by the reasonably good agreement between their predictions and the experimental results, for a wide range of projectile energies and target characteristics. Firstly, we apply the theoretical procedure to calculate the stopping cross sections for H+ and He+ beams in foils of different allotropic forms of carbon (such as diamond, graphite, amorphous carbon, glassy carbon and C60-fullerite), as a function of the projectile energy. We take into account the electronic structure of the projectile, as well as the different charge states it can acquire, the energy loss associated to the electronic capture and loss processes, the polarization of the projectile, and a realistic description of the target. On the other hand, the simulation code is used to evaluate the energy distributions of swift H+ and He+ ion beams when traversing several foils of the above mentioned allotropic forms of carbon, in order to analyze the influence of the chemical and physical state of the target in the projectile energy loss. These allotropic effects are found to become more important around the maximum of the stopping cross-section.