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In the present paper, the inelastic mean free path (IMFP) of incident electrons is calculated as a function of energy for silicon (Si), oxides of silicon (SiO 2 ), SiO, and Al 2 O 3 in bulk form by employing atomic/molecular inelastic cross sections derived by using a semi-empirical quantum mechanical method developed earlier. A general agreement of the present results is found with most of the available data. It is of great importance that we have been able to estimate the minimum IMFP, which corresponds to the peak of inelastic interactions of incident electrons in each solid investigated. New results are presented for SiO, for which no comparison is available. The present work is important in view of the lack of experimental data on the IMFP in solids.

Electron impact ionization of SiCl X (X = 1-4) molecules is less studied but an important process for understanding and modelling the interactions of silicon-chlorine plasmas with different materials. The SiCl 3 radical is a major chloro-silicon species involved in the CVD (chemical vapour deposition) of silicon films from SiCl 4 /Ar microwave plasmas. We report in this paper the total ionization cross sections for electron collisions on these silicon compounds at incident energies from the ionization threshold to 2000 eV. We employ the 'complex scattering potential-ionization contribution' method and identify the relative importance of various channels, with ionization included in the cumulative inelastic scattering. New results are also presented on these exotic molecular targets. This work is significant in view of the paucity of theoretical studies on the radicals SiCl X (X = 1-3) and on SiCl 4 .

In this paper, we report theoretical electron impact ionization cross sections from threshold to 2000 eV for isocarbonic open chain molecules C4H6, C4H8, C4F6 including their isomers, and closed chain molecules c-C4H8 and c-C4F8. Theoretical formalism employed presently, viz., Complex Scattering Potential-ionization contribution method has been used successfully for a variety of polyatomic molecules. The present ionization calculations are very important since results available for the studied targets are either scarce or none. Our work affords comparison of C4 containing hydrocarbon versus fluorocarbon molecules. Comparisons of the present ionization cross sections are made wherever possible, and new ionization data are also presented.

)metastable species get ionized in their interactions with energetic electrons, then they would not contribute to auroral emission. Therefore, we investigate electron ionization of the said metastable species by calculating relevant total cross sections. Our quantum mechanical calculations are based on projected approximate ionization contribution in the total inelastic cross sections. In all the four targets, the resulting cross sections are fairly large, indicating the importance of the electron ionization process.