Stopping power of C, O and Cl in tantalum oxide

Tantalum oxide is used in a variety of applications due to its high bandgap, high-K and high index of refraction. Unintentional impurities can change properties of tantalum oxide, and heavy ion elastic recoil detection is a method that can play a fundamental role in the quantification of those impurities. Furthermore, tantalum oxide is frequently part of the samples that also include other materials, which are often analysed with ion beam techniques. However, there are very few reported stopping power measurements for tantalum oxide, and data analysis relies not only on interpolation from a sparse data base but also on the Bragg rule. As is well known, the Bragg rule is often inaccurate for oxides, particularly when the difference in atomic numbers of the involved elements is very large as is case for Ta2O5. We have used a bulk method, previously developed by us and applied successfully to other systems, to determine experimentally the stopping power of tantalum oxide for three different ion types: C, O and Cl. In the present paper the results of our measurements and bulk method analysis are presented.