Energy distribution of proton microbeam transmitted through two flat plates

The transmission of 1 MeV proton microbeam passing between two parallel flat plates was investigated. Three different materials were used in our experiments. As insulators we used Polytetrafluoroethylene and borosilicate glass plates and glass with gold layer on the surface as conductor. The surface of the plates was parallel to the beam axis and one of the plates was moved towards the beam. The energy distribution and the deflection of the transmitted beam were measured as the function of the sample distance relative to the beam. We found systematic differences between the behaviour of the metallic and insulator samples. The proton microbeam suffered significant deflection towards the sample surface due to the image acceleration when using conductor material. In case of the glass and Polytetrafluoroethylene plates the beam was deflected into the opposite direction, and the incident protons did not suffer significant energy loss, which is the consequence of the guiding effect.