Optical behaviour of swift heavy ions irradiated poly(vinyl alcohol) films

Polyvinyl alcohol films were irradiated to 90 MeV O 6+ and 150 MeV Si 14+ ions at fluence ranging from 1010 to 1012 ions/cm2. The observed changes in optical energy gap of this polymer have been investigated and results are tried to be explained in terms of energy transferred by the incident ions. It has been noticed that the value of optical energy gap decreases with increasing energy loss during the ion–polymer interaction process.