The first part of this paper describes the Meissner effect in superconductors which serves as the most definitive evidence for superconductivity. It is shown that the microwave perturbation technique may be used to demonstrate this effect. By measuring the changes of resonant frequency and inverse quality factor Q of a microwave cavity with a small volume of sample loading, the Meissner effect can be shown by using the Slater perturbation equation. The experimental system is described with details and the basic principle of each component discussed. The second part of this work describes the technique employed to do the actual measurements. The experiments were conducted on samples of Gallium Arsenide (GaAs) and lead zirconate titanate (PZT) to look for the possible high temperature superconductivity properties. Results of these experiments are presented and discussed. Conclusion and suggestions to future exploration are made.

Accurate knowledge of stopping powers is essential for these for quantitative analysis and surface characterization of thin films using ion beam analysis (IBA). These values are also of interest in radiobiology and radiotherapy, and in ion- implantation technology where shrinking feature sizes puts high demands on the accuracy of range calculations. A theory that predicts stopping powers and ranges for all projectile-target combinations is needed. The most important database used to report the stopping powers is the SRIM/TRIM program developed by Ziegler and coworkers. However, other researchers report that at times, these values differ significantly from experimental values. In this study the stopping powers of Si, P and S ions have been measured in Ni, Cu, Ge and GaAs absorbers in the energy range ~ 2-10 MeV. For elemental films of Ni, Cu and Ge, the stopping of heavy ions was measured using a novel ERD (Elastic Recoil Detection) based technique. In which an elastically recoiled lighter atom is used to indirectly measure the energy of the incoming heavy ion using a surface barrier detector. In this way it was possible to reduce the damage and to improve the FWHM of the detector. The results were compared to SRIM-2000 predictions …