Experimental determinatation of stopping forces for ions in matter

Tesis doctoral inédita leída en la Universidad Autónoma de Madrid, Facultad de Ciencias, Departamento de Física Aplicada. Fecha de lectura: 12-11-2004The present work deals with the interaction of moving ions with matter. A strong emphasis is done on the methodological aspects of the experimental determination of stopping forces. The general objective of the work is to find a suitable method to platain stopping forces for ions in materials of practical interest for reseach ielated to ion beam analysis/modification of materials. Various combinations of ions and target materials have been investigated using already established methods and the experience gained from them helped to develop a new method with some very attractive characteristics from a practical perspective. The materials treated are mainly binary compounds with important technological applications (Si0 2 , Si3N4 and Al203 ), but also Mylar and gold. The ions investigated have been: 4He, 12C, 16u^ ,FA1, 28Si and 40Ar. - This document is also a memory of the fruits of more than four years of work, both in the stopping force research as in the participation in developing a completely new accelerator laboratory for ion beam analysis (the second in Spain and equipped with the largest accelerator). The evolution of this thesis and that of the accelerator run in parallel: both were mere projects in 1999 and both have been now completed —if a laboratory is ever complete—, being this the first thesis to see light from our young laboratory. The text is structured in three parts with three chapters each. The first part is devoted to establish the basic concepts that are used along the rest of the work. The second part describes the experimental setup of our laboratory as well as the experimental methods that are used for stopping force determination (those already existent and also the newly developed one). Finally, the third part shows the experimental results obtained along. the various sets of experiments performed