Eur. Phys. J. D 64, 297-301 (2011)
https://doi.org/10.1140/epjd/e2011-20352-4

Regular Article

Energy-loss straggling study of proton and alpha-particle beams incident onto ZrO₂ and Al₂O₂ films

¹ Instituto de Fisica, Universidade Federal do Rio Grande do Sul, Porto Alegre, 91501-970, Brazil
² Departament de Física Aplicada, Universitat d’Alacant, 03080 Alacant, Spain
³ Departamento de Física – Centro de Investigación en Óptica y Nanofísica, Universidad de Murcia, 30100 Murcia, Spain
⁴ Instituto de Física, Universidade de São Paulo, C.P. 66318, 05315-970 São Paulo, Brazil

^a e-mail: ias@ua.es

Received: 14 June 2011
Published online: 11 October 2011

Abstract

The energy-loss straggling of zirconia (ZrO₂) and alumina (Al₂O₃) has been experimentally determined for proton and alpha-particle beams mainly by means of the Rutherford backscattering technique and in some few cases using the transmission method. The incident energies of the projectiles covers a wide range, from 200 keV up to 2000 keV for H⁺ and from 200 keV up to 4000 keV for He⁺ in zirconia films. In the case of alumina films the studied energy range was 100 keV–3000 keV for H⁺ and 100 keV–6000 keV for He⁺. Our experimental results compare very well with theoretical calculations based on the dielectric formalism and a suitable description of the electronic excitation spectrum of ZrO₂ and Al₂O₃ films through their energy-loss function.