Charge Exchange and Energy Loss of Slow Highly Charged Ions in Graphene

Slow highly charged ion (HCI) interaction with surfaces 100 was studied extensively in recent years and revealed many 7+ interesting aspects of the underlying processes [1]. Nanostructure formation by single HCI impact was successfully 10 linked to defect mediated desorption or even surface melting due to HCI induced local electronic excitations. The neutralization dynamics of a slow (v ≪ v0 = αc, α: fine structure constant, c: speed of light) HCI in front of a solid surface is well described by the classical-over-barrier model. However, not much is known about the neutralization below the surface, i.e. in the material. Below surface neutralization becomes important for normal incidence, because here the interaction time above the surface is not sufficient for neutralization and relaxation of the HCI. We present results on charge exchange and energy loss measurements of slow highly charged Xe ions with charge states of 10 < Q < 35 transmitted through freestanding single Xe16+ layer graphene as the thinnest and lightest solid target material there is. We find that the charge exchange is not bimodal as in case of transmission through 1 nm thick carbon 1 nanomembranes [2], but only very large charge exchange is observed. We attribute this to (1) the availability of solely smallimpactparameters (p<1.5Å ̊) in graphene as well as (2) very high mobilities of charge carriers and subsequently transfer of (at least) 20-30 electrons within less than 10 fs. Especially the second fact is surprising, because here the charge transfer is hardly conceivable as a sequential, but rather as a collective electron transfer process. For incident charge states Q > 25 we observe a saturation of charge exchange, i.e. the exit charge state distribution has a mean value Qmean ≈ Qin − 20 (see fig. 1). The contributions of above surface charge transfer and charge transfer during collision as well as energy loss and its dependence on the charge state and charge exchange will be discussed.