Electron-acoustic phonon scattering in SiO2 determined from a pseudo-potential for energies of E≳E BZ

The existing description of hot electron transport in silicon dioxide contains the deficiency that the resulting electron inverse mean free paths and loss rates associated with electron-acoustic phonon scattering continue to increase in an unphysical way at energies above Egap. One can remove that discrepancy by introducing a pseudo-potential which reflects the screened atom characteristic of higher energy electron-lattice interactions. The low energy, low q scattering, described in terms of the deformation potential, is then recovered, intact, in the low q limit. The use of the screened Coulomb potential introduces no adjustable parameters and results in an acoustic scattering cross section which approaches the phase shift derived elastic scattering cross section at E ≳ Egap.