Backscattered Electrons Spectra and Angular Distributions: Simulations with EGS5

Abstract—The purpose of the present study is to compare numerical Monte Carlo simulations of backscattering of electrons, mainly in the keV range, with available experimental data. The final goal is to assess the ability of the Monte Carlo code to predict viable results, in view of the complexity and difficulty of performing experimental measurements. A specific code for simulating electrons backscattering was developed, based on the EGS5 electron-photon transport routines. The code was parallelized very efficiently for a common memory configuration. Simulation results for the backscattering coefficient \eta, the energy spectrum d\eta/dq, and the angle-dependent energy spectrum d\eta/dqd\Omega were obtained. Comparing with experiments shows agreement from very good to fair, especially in regions of high q (energy) values. For low values of q, there are no experimental results due to difficulties in measurements. Hence, the Monte Carlo program can provide good estimates, in the range of energies from tens of keV up to 100-200 ke