C. Dufour et al., SENSITIVITY OF METALLIC MATERIALS UNDER IRRADIATION WITH SWIFT HEAVY-IONS, Nuclear instruments & methods in physics research. Section B, Beam interactions with materials and atoms, 107(1-4), 1996, pp. 218-222
We report on experimental results on metallic materials (Ag,Sn) after
irradiation with swift heavy ions. These results, in addition to previ
ous ones, show that the behaviour of that kind of materials could be w
ell described in the framework of the thermal spike model, We find a g
ood correlation between theoretical results and experimental ones prov
ided that the only free parameter of the model should be known: the nu
mber z of electrons involved in the thermal spike mechanism via the el
ectron phonon coupling constant, It is shown that the values of z must
lie in the range of 1 and 2 electrons per atom, A simple criterion is
deduced and used to know whether a given material could be sensitive
or not to the electronic slowing down of swift heavy ions.