Unifying Representation of Collision Cross Sections in Gases

Electrical discharges in gases continues to be an active area of research for industrial applications such as power systems, environmental clean up, laser technology, semiconductor fabrication etc. A fundamental knowledge of electron-gas-neutral interaction is indispensable and, of the various types of cross sections, the more important ones are the momentum transfer and ionization cross sections. In this paper the energy dependence of the momentum transfer cross sections are categorized according to the nature of the species of the neutral. The species are (1) rare gas atoms (2) di-atomic molecules with combinations of polar, non-polar, attaching, and non-attaching properties (3) poly-atomic molecules with combinations of polar, non-polar, attaching, and non-attaching properties. New results are provided for momentum transfer for selected gases by analyzing the data of scattering cross sections. Conclusions are drawn high lighting the energy range in which the momentum transfer cross section data are required