Beam Induced Degradation Effect in Ion Beam Analysis of Polymer

The question of whether ion beam analysis technique can be applied to the study of polymers has been investigated. Degradation of mylar foil under MeV ion beam irradiation was observed. In order to describe the degradation process of mylar foil under ion beam irradiation quantitatively, only one dose-independent degradation cross section for each of hydrogen and oxygen was needed. Our results suggest that proton or He⁺ ion combined with rotation of the target (scanning area of 20mm²) can be used to study the mylar foil without substantially changing the compositions of the target up to ion fluence 5 x 10¹⁵/cm².