Secondary electron interactions in materials with environmental and radiological interest

Important environmental and radiological applications require energy deposition models including the interactions between the secondary electrons and the atoms or molecules of the medium. In this work we propose a method to obtain reliable cross-section data to be used in these models by combining total and ionisation cross-section measurements with simple calculations of the differential and integral elastic cross sections. The energy loss spectra obtained in this experiment have been also used to derive the stopping power of the considered materials for electrons. Some examples of results for atomic (Xe) and molecular (CF4) targets are presented and discussed in this paper.