PIXE-measurement of Kα X-ray production cross sections for 1-MeV C⁺-ions in thick samples of Si, Fe, Cu and Zn

Abstract

© 2018 Elsevier B.V. Particle-Induced X-ray Emission (PIXE) using heavy ions proved to be an alternative with respect to PIXE using light protons due to relatively large cross sections. In this work we explored the capabilities of PIXE with using singly-charged carbon ions at relatively low energy of 1 MeV (or 83 keV/amu) to measure Kα X-ray production cross sections. The measurement was performed for thick samples of Si, Fe, Cu and Zn, using the standard 2-MeV proton-induced cross sections as the reference. For the measurement from thick samples, we adopted a special multi-slabs method in the calculation by considering the sample thickness effect. The effective ion range was divided into a number of thin slabs in which the energy dependent cross section and the thickness dependent X-ray transmission were varied. The paper describes details of the measurement principle and method and reports the result. The resulting data obtained from the present work were compared with those from the PWBA and ECPSSR theories, the simple thin-film method and the measurement of thin film samples and discussed for the validity of our result.