Advances in targetry with thin diamond-like carbon foils

Thin and stable diamond-like carbon (DLC) foils, which were fabricated at the Kurchatov Institute by sputter deposition, have proved recently to be advantageous for stripping and secondary electron timing of high energy heavy ions in a number of accelerator experiments. This resulted in expanding applications of these DLC foils which necessitated further development efforts directed toward the following applications of DLC targetry: (i) thin stripper foils for lower energy tandem accelerators, (ii) enlarged (up to 66 mm in diameter) stop foils for improved time-of-flight elastic recoil detection ion beam analysis, and (iii) ultra-thin (about 0.6 μg/cm2) DLC foils for some fundamental and applied physics experiments. Along with the fabrication of thin DLC stripper foils for tandem accelerators, much thicker (up to 200 μg/cm2) foils for post-stripping of heavy-ion beams in higher energy linacs, are within reach.