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To contact me please use ingram@ohio.edu.


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About me

My research area is using energetic particles to analyze and modify materials. I collaborate with many different research groups that want to use the facilities Edwards Accelerator Laboratory to analyze materials. The MeV ion beams of our 4.5 MV tandem accelerator can be used not just for 2-3 MeV Rutherford Backscattering Spectroscopy (RBS) but also for higher energy RBS, high-energy elastic resonant scattering, elastic recoil spectroscopy (ERS), particle-induced x-ray spectroscopy (PIXE) and particle induced gamma-ray emission (PIGE) spectroscopy.

I use two of the six beamlines of the accelerator for materials analysis, modification, and production. One of the beamlines (15o L) is used for routine MeV ion beam analysis (RBS, ERS, PIXE). It also can be used for MeV ion irradiation of samples over an area of about 1 cm wide and 2 cm high. The scattering chamber is high-vacuum and has an xyz remotely controlled manipulator with an additional manual rotation about the vertical axis. The targets are aligned with a laser to ensure the 1 mm wide 2 mm high ion beam hits the desired spot on the sample.

The second beamline (23o R) provides the ion beam for the W.M. Keck Thin Film Characterization Facility. This is a suite of ultra-high vacuum (uhv) compatible chambers that enable all the ion beam analysis of 15o L beamline. The target manipulator is a Panmure 6-axis goniometer. This instrument enables ion channeling of single crystal samples. In the base of the scattering chamber are various physical vapor deposition (PVD) systems: thermal evaporation sources; magnetron sputtering; Kaufman ion source. The chamber also includes a low energy electron diffraction (LEED) system. The chamber is connected via a uhv highway to a chemical vapor deposition (CVD) chamber and a Kratos electron spectrometer for x-ray photo-electron spectroscopy (XPS), Auger electron spectroscopy (AES), and ultra-violet photo-electron spectroscopy (UPS).