Electron mean free path and conduction-band density-of-states in solid methane as determined from low-energy electron transmission experiments

Recently, Plenkiewicz et al. developed a theoretical model for analyzing the current I_t transmitted by a thin dielectric film as a function of incident electron energy E. The purpose of this paper is to apply this model to the analysis of recent I_t(E) results for solid methane. The analysis permits the determination of both the electron mean free path as a function of energy and the electronic conduction-band density-of-states in the quasi-elastic scattering region. The differences between our results and Kunz's solid methane band structure calculations are also discussed.