Electron−hole pair creation energy in SiO2

Abstract
The average energy W required to create an electron−hole pair in SiO2 has been determined to be approximately 18 eV by considering the energy loss of fast electrons in solids. This energy loss occurs primarily by plasmon production and subsequent decay of the plasmons into electron−hole pairs. It is also demonstrated that recent data on electron−irradiated SiO2 films can be explained remarkably well by a columnar recombination model. The extrapolation to infinite electric field of the columnar model fit to the data yields a value for W which is in excellent agreement with the value obtained from the energy loss calculation.