Ranges of Energetic Atoms in Solids

Abstract

The ranges in solids of atoms having energies from 1 to 100 keV have been calculated using Monte Carlo techniques. The model assumes that the moving atom loses all of its energy through binary elastic collisions with the atoms of the solid. The potential of interaction, principally studied, is an exponentially screened Coulomb (Bohr) potential, and the scattering angles are calculated explicitly. It is found that neither the hard sphere approximation nor the inverse r-squared approximation to the Bohr potential is particularly good. To obtain correspondence with experimental results it is found that the Bohr screening length must be increased as the atomic number of the interacting atoms increases.