Assessment of the self-consistency of electron-THF cross sections using electron swarm techniques: Mixtures of THF-Ar and THF-N2

Abstract

The pulsed Townsend technique has been used to measure transport coefficients in mixtures of tetrahydrofuran (THF) with N2 and argon. These measurements are the first investigations of swarm transport in gas mixtures with THF, with the drift velocity and effective Townsend ionization coefficient reported for a range of reduced electric fields between 0.23 and 800 Td (1 Td = 10−21 V m2). These transport coefficients are compared with those calculated using a multiterm kinetic theory, using the cross section set developed in our previous studies [N. A. Garland et al., Phys. Rev. A 88, 062712 (2013) and M. J. E. Casey et al., J. Chem. Phys. 147, 195103 (2017)]. The swarm technique of iteratively adjusting cross sections to reproduce experimental transport measurements is subsequently utilized in this study to address the deficiencies in the earlier cross section sets, exposed by the gas mixture measurements. Refinement of the low-energy extrapolation of the quasielastic database cross section and the low-energy extrapolation and magnitude of the dissociative electron attachment cross section are detailed, as well as the adjustments to the two previously proposed neutral dissociation cross sections. These refinements were necessary in order to minimize differences between our measured and calculated transport coefficients.