Electronic stopping forces of heavy ions in metal oxides

Electronic energy loss of charged particles in materials is a fundamental process responsible for the unique response of materials in applications of advanced nuclear power, radiation detectors and advanced processing of electronic devices. In this study, stopping forces for ions in metal oxides of ZrO2, Ta2O5 and Nb2O5 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 these thin metal oxide foils was measured over a continuous range of energies from a few 10 keV/nucleon to over a thousand keV/nucleon using the ToF data that was tagged by a Si detector with and without the stopping foils. Comparisons are made with the SRIM-2003 (The Stopping and Range of Ions in Matter) predictions. While SRIM predicts He stopping force well, varying degrees of agreement with the measured stopping data up to 7% are observed and deviations around stopping maximum are evident for heavy elements.