Study of the chemical binding effect on the molecular stopping power of V2O5

The stopping powers of V and V2O5 have been measured for helium ions with energies from 0.3 to 2.0 MeV and probable errors of 2.2 and 3.0%, respectively. The vanadium stopping power was 12 and 14% lower than the previous measurement of Chu and Powers (1969) and 2 to 5% lower than the semi-empirical values of Chu and Zeigler (1974) in this energy range. The V2O5 stopping power was found to be 2 to 3.5% lower than the Bragg rule curve calculated with the molecular oxygen values of Bourland, Chu, and Powers (1971) and the present vanadium stopping power. The use of Bragg's rule to extract the oxygen contribution to the molecular stopping power of V2O5 results in a solid oxygen stopping power which is in good agreement with the solid molecular oxygen measurement of Chu, Braun, Davies, Matsunami, and Thompson (1978) and approximately 5% higher than Feng's value (1974) obtained from metal oxides which have wide energy band gaps. The present experiment cautions against the use of a common stopping power for oxygen in Bragg rule calculations for solid compounds as purposed by Feng and by Zeigler and Chu (1976)