Electronic stopping power of slow 20Ne ions in Au obtained from TOF-MEIS and Monte-Carlo computer simulations

The electronic stopping power of slow Ne ions (v > 0.6 a.u. per nucleon, i.e. 180 keV) in polycrystalline Au was investigated in a backscattering approach. Spectra were recorded in a Time-Of-Flight Medium-Energy Ion Scattering (TOF-MEIS) experiment using a gold thin film of several nm thickness deposited on Si. The stopping power was extracted from fitting energy converted TOF-spectra by Monte-Carlo simulations for the ion trajectories. This permits an accurate disentanglement of elastic losses and inelastic losses which are due to nuclear collisions and interactions of the ion with the electronic system of the solid, respectively. The resulting electronic stopping cross section is found to exhibit excellent velocity proportionality in the whole investigated energy range. Data is compared to other experimental datasets for similar ion energies.