Attenuation of slow (10–40 eV) electrons in soft nanoparticles: Size matters in argon clusters

Electron attenuation due to inelastic and elastic scattering in condensed media can often be described in terms of the effective attenuation length (EAL) of the electron. The EAL is thus an important parameter for describing electron transport processes as exemplified by dissipation of energy following radiolysis. Focusing on electrons at low electron kinetic energies (10-40 eV) in condensed argon, we determine EAL from x-ray photoelectron spectra of argon nanoparticles and compare to values obtained from valence ionization in thin argon films as well as from gas-phase electron-scattering data. EAL determined from argon clusters shows variation with cluster size. Moreover, the values are significantly lower than those obtained in valence-ionization studies and from scattering data. Our results corroborate recent x-ray photoelectron spectroscopy-based determination of EALs of water showing large differences to the EALs determined by other methods in amorphous ice at low kinetic energies of the photoelectron [Y.-I. Suzuki, K. Nishizawa, N. Kurahashi, and T. Suzuki, Phys. Rev. E 90, 010302 (2014)PLEEE81539-375510.1103/PhysRevE.90.010302], underlining that care must be taken when using EAL values from other sources for core-level electrons.