Multiple scattering of heavy ions of keV energies transmitted through thin films

This paper describes experimental studies of the multiple scattering of a number of different ions with 1<Z₁<18 and 500 keV incident energy, transmitted through thin films of Se, Pd, Ag, Te, Ta₂{O}₅$, and Bi, and foils consisting of a mixture of C and Au atoms. We found that the targets fell into two groups with respect to structure. The first group, in which the targets were amorphous or had very small crystallites, showed multiple-scattering distributions of heavy ions, in agreement with current theory. In the second group, where the targets had grain sizes larger than approximately 100 {}, the distributions were consistently narrower than those predicted theoretically. Possible mechanisms responsible for the deviations were investigated.