Energy loss and straggling of 1–50 keV H, He, C, N, and O ions passing through few layer graphene

• Evaluation of graphene foils for space plasma instruments.
• Energy loss and straggling of keV ions passing through graphene foils.
• Lower energy loss than for ultra-thin carbon foils.
• Thickness non-uniformity leads to higher straggling.

Graphene could be an alternative to amorphous carbon foils, in particular in space plasma instrumentation. The interaction of ions or neutral atoms with these foils results in different effects: electron emission, charge exchange, angular scattering, and energy straggling. We showed in previous studies that (1) the charge exchange properties are similar for graphene and regular carbon foils, and (2) the scattering at low energies (few keVs) is less for graphene than for one of our thinnest practical carbon foils. In this study, we report measurements of the energy loss and straggling of ∼1–50 keV H, He, C, N, and O ions in graphene. We compare graphene and a carbon foil for hydrogen. We provide simple power law fits to the average energy loss, energy straggling, and skewness of the energy distributions. We find the energy loss for ions transiting through graphene to be reduced compared to thin carbon foils but the energy straggling to be larger, which we attribute to the non-uniformity of the graphene foils used in this study.