Abstract
By means of two alternative methods namely, the maximum entropy and Chapman-Enskog, flux limited approach the ion transport equation for slowing-down problem of low-energy light ions in solid has been solved explicitly. Maximum entropy technique yields approximate solutions in the form of locally Maxwellian distribution function, based on moments expansion truncated upon entropy maximization. The behavior of the approximate maximum entropy and the flux limited solutions have the same tendency. Knowing the distribution function obtained by flux limited approach, allows us to calculate directly the path length distributions of backscattered ions, and compared with that found by other theories such as Laplace-transform and double Legendre polynomial approximation. One can see that the flux limited approach is better than the previous method namely, (DPN) Laplace-transform. The results reported in this article provide further evidence of the usefulness of both maximum entropy and flux limited for obtaining the solution of ion transport equation in compact form. (C) 2006 Elsevier Ltd. All rights reserved.