Electron scattering from C2-C8 symmetric ether molecules

Abstract

The present article reports the calculated total (Qtot), elastic (Qel), inelastic (Qinel), and total ionization cross section (Qion) for C2-C8 symmetric ether molecules for the incident electron energies from ionization threshold to 5 keV. The calculation is based on the approach, multi-scattering center spherical complex optical potential formalism (MSCOP). The total elastic and inelastic cross sections are computed under this framework and the total cross section is obtained from their sum. Since Qinel cannot be measured directly, we have estimated this value theoretically through the complex spherical potential-ionization contribution approach and compared with the measurements. Besides cross sections, we have also investigated the isomeric effect of ethers on electron-molecule scattering and the dependence of molecular size in the magnitude of cross section. The size effect is confirmed from the correlation plot between the calculated Qion peak and dielectric polarisability of the target molecules. The total and elastic cross sections for most of the molecules are reported for the first time.