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Abstract We report comparisons of electron inelastic mean free paths (IMFPs) determined from our predictive IMFP equation TPP‐2M and reference IMFPs calculated from optical data. These comparisons were made for values of the parameter N v (the number of valence electrons per atom or molecule) that we have recommended and those that were recommended in a recent paper by Seah et al. ( Surf. Interface Anal. 2001; 31 : 778). The comparisons were made for eight elemental solids (K, Y, Gd, Tb, Dy, Hf, Ta and Bi) and two compounds (KBr and Y 2 O 3 ) for which there were appreciable differences in the recommended N v values from the two sources and for which optical data were available for the IMFP calculations. The average of the root‐mean‐square (RMS) deviations for the ten materials between IMFPs from the TPP‐2M equation with our N v values and the reference IMFPs was 11.0%, whereas the corresponding average with the Seah et al. N v values was 20.2%. The larger average in the latter comparison was mainly due to large (>20%) RMS deviations for four materials (K, Hf, Ta and KBr). For the other six materials, the RMS deviations with the Seah et al. values of N v were similar to those with our values of N v . Based on the comparisons for these ten materials, we believe that it is preferable to use our values of N v in the TPP‐2M equation. Copyright © 2003 John Wiley & Sons, Ltd.
Tanuma et al. (Tue,) studied this question.