Eur. Phys. J. D 54, 473-476 (2009)
https://doi.org/10.1140/epjd/e2009-00023-y

Fe and Fe+2%Si targets as ion sources via UV laser ablation plasma

¹ Department of Physics of Lecce, Laboratorio di Elettronica Applicata e Strumentazione (LEAS), INFN of Lecce, Via per Arnesano, 73100 Lecce, Italy
² Institute of Physics, ASCR, Na Slovance 2, 18221 Prague, Czech Republic
³ Department of Physics, University of Bari, Via Amendola, 70126 Bari, Italy

Corresponding author: ^a antonella.lorusso@le.infn.it

Received: 4 September 2008
Revised: 17 November 2008
Published online: 6 February 2009

Abstract

In the last years the ion component of a laser-produced plasma has been considered and studied as an object to provide high-density ion sources, which can be applied in many fields such as laser-induced implantation. In this work a KrF laser beam of 10⁸ W/cm² irradiance was focused onto single-crystalline Fe and single-crystalline Fe with 2% of Si targets and the characteristics of both free expanding laser-produced plasmas were compared. The time-of-flight (TOF) method was applied to determine the ion charge yield at various laser fluences and the ion angular spread. The analyses of TOF spectra showed a synergetic effect of the silicon admixture in target material on the Fe ions production. Besides, this admixture was also responsible of the increasing of the plasma temperature which corresponds in turn to the increasing of the average kinetic energy of the particles as well as of the more collimated ion distribution.