Cross sections for elastic electron scattering by tetramethylsilane in the intermediate-energy range

Abstract

Organosilicon compounds are of current interest due to the numerous applications of these species in industries. Some of these applications require the knowledge of electron collision cross sections, which are scarce for such compounds. In this work, we report absolute values of differential, integral, and momentum-transfer cross sections for elastic electron scattering by tetramethylsilane (TMS) measured in the 100-1000 eV energy range. The relative-flow technique is used to normalize our data. In addition, the independent-atom-model (IAM) and the additivity rule (AR), widely used to model electron collisions with light hydrocarbons, are also applied for e{sup -}-TMS interaction. The comparison of our measured results of cross sections and the calculated data shows good agreement, particularly near the higher-end of incident energies.