Stopping power spectra of 4He ions in Zn, Cd and Pb-based semiconductors: A theoretical study for Rutherford Backscattering Spectroscopy analysis of metal chalcogenide thin films thickness

In this work, we report a systematic study on the Stopping Power Spectra (SPS) of 4He ions in different metal chalcogenide semiconductors. SPS in II (Zn, Cd) – VI (O, S, Se, Te) and IV (Pb) – VI binary semiconductors were studied by using SRIM (2013) simulation software for analyzing the energy dissipation profiles of 4He ions. Ions’ energies from 0.1 to 10 [MeV] were considered for simulations. Stopping powers were generally estimated between 0.1 and 0.6 [keV/nm]. Results are particularly useful for analytical data processing in Rutherford Backscattering Spectrometry (RBS) experiments focused on an accurate estimation of the thickness of thin films and multilayer structures based on metal chalcogenide semiconductors.