Heating and diffusion of hot electrons in non-polar liquids

Publisher Website
Google Scholar
Abstract
The drift velocities of excess electrons in liquid Ar, Kr and Xe under strong heating fields (up to field strengths of about 106V cm-1), their mean energy, longitudinal and transverse diffusion coefficients and respective characteristic energies are calculated in the framework of the Lekner-Cohen theory (1967). Computed values of the characteristic transverse energy are considerably greater than the mean electron energy and attain a few tens of eV. The transverse diffusion coefficient is larger than the longitudinal coefficient by a factor of a hundred. These effects are caused by the sharp increase of the structure factor of liquids for wavenumbers corresponding to energies of a few eV. The behaviour of the structure factor is also responsible for the non-monotonic behaviour of the electron drift velocity as a function of the electric field strength. The results of these calculations are compared with available experimental data.

This publication has 34 references indexed in Scilit: