Low-energy electron-SiH4collisions using a parameter-free spherical optical potential

The authors investigate low-energy (0.1-30 eV) electron -SiH 4 scattering by employing a parameter-free optical potential which is a sum of three spherical terms, namely the static, exchange and polarisation forces. The authors demonstrate that the qualitative features of the scattering parameters (such as a Ramsauer-Townsend minimum below 1 eV and a shape resonance structure around 2-3 eV) observed in recent experiments, can be very well reproduced in the present simple model. Quantitatively, the authors results (below 10 eV) are very close to the recent close-coupling calculations of Jain and Thompson (1982) and Gianturco et al (1987) using a similar kind of (but non-spherical) model optical potential. Above 10 eV, the present results are in fair agreement with experiments and are better than the earlier calculations.