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Publication on He charge exchange processes in low-energy ion scattering

Our article “Charge exchange between He+ ions and solid targets: The dependence on target electronic structure revisited” was published in Nuclear Instruments and Methods in Physics Research Section B on the 2nd of March 2023. Authors are Marko Sturm, Niek Lokhorst (whose BSc assignment formed an important contribution to this paper), Andrey Zameshin and Marcelo Ackermann.

Understanding charge exchange between He projectiles and solid targets is important for quantitative surface analysis with low-energy ion scattering (LEIS). In this work we combined measurements of ion neutralisation probabilities (from surface scattering) with analysis of so-called LEIS tails, formed by reionisation of He projectiles scattered on sub-surface atoms. We reproduce the dependence of neutralisation on position of the target elements in the periodic table, but show that the previously claimed similar trend of reionisation must be strongly influenced by LEIS measurements used as reference for determination of the reionisation probability.