Measuring the sensitivity of imaging plates to keV carbon ions

Imaging plates (IPs) are valuable tools for measuring the intensity of ionizing radiation such as x-rays, electrons, and ions. In this work, we measured the sensitivity of IPs to carbon ions in the unexplored energy region of 0.7-10 keV. These carbon ions were generated using a low-energy electron cyclotron resonance ion-beam source and were subsequently transported to the IPs via an energy-selecting bending magnet. We found that the measured sensitivity exhibited a nonlinear relationship with ion energy, for which the existing formula does not account. Thus, we propose a new formula that can effectively describe the sensitivity of IPs to carbon ions with energies from the single-keV range to higher values.