L- and M-shell x-ray production cross sections have been measured for thin solid targets of neodymium, gadolinium, holmium, ytterbium, gold, and lead by 25 MeV 12/6C^q+ (q=4,5,6) and by 32 MeV 16/8O^q+ (q=5,7,8). The cross sections were determined from measurements made with thin targets (< 2.5 μg/cm2). For projectiles with one or two K-shell vacancies, the target x-ray production cross sections were found to be enhanced over those for projectiles without a K-shell vacancy. The sum of direct ionization to the continuum (DI) plus electron capture (EC) to the L, M, N... shells and EC to the K-shell of the projectile have been extracted from the data. The results are compared to the predictions of first Born theories, i.e., plane wave Born approximation for DI and Oppenheimer-Brinkman-Kramers formula of Nikolaev for EC and to the ECPSSR approach that accounts for Energy loss and Coulomb deflection of the projectile as well as for Relativistic and Perturbed Stationary States of inner shell electrons.

In this work, ordered all-binary short-period strained InAs/GaAs superlattice quantum wells were studied as an alternative to strained ternary alloy InGaAs/GaAs quantum wells. InGaAs quantum wells QWs have been of great interest in recent years due to the great potential applications of these materials in future generations of electronic and optoelectronic devices. The all binary structures are expected to have all the advantages of their ternary counterparts, plus several additional benefits related to growth, to the elimination of alloy disorder scattering and to the presence of a higher average indium content.