Electron impact elastic scattering from methane and silane molecules

Abstract

Analytical expressions for the static potentials of the electron scattering from methane (CH4) and silane (SiH4) molecules have been obtained using Gaussian wave functions. Subsequently, we have studied the elastic scattering of electrons from these molecules utilizing their static potentials along with exchange and polarization potentials as well as a purely imaginary absorption potential to represent scattering into inelastic channels. The multi-centre target molecules are represented as STO-6G Gaussian wave functions. We have calculated the differential, integrated and momentum transfer cross sections in a wide range of incident electron energies from 10 to 500 eV. Comparisons of our results for CH4 and SiH4 with the available measurements and theoretical results are presented.