Role of the tail of high-energy secondary electrons in the Monte Carlo evaluation of the fraction of electrons backscattered from polymethylmethacrylate

This work describes a Monte Carlo algorithm which appropriately takes into account the stochastic behav-ior of electron transport in solids and the simulation of the energy distributions of the secondary andbackscattered electrons from polymethylmethacrylate irradiated by an electron beam. The simulation ofthe backscattered and secondary electron spectra also allows calculating the backscattering coefficientand the secondary electron yield of polymethylmethacrylate as a function of the initial energy of theincident electrons. Results of the simulation are compared with the available experimental data. Theimportance of considering all the electrons emerging form the surface in calculating the secondary elec-tron yield and the backscattering coefficient is highlighted. In particular, we will discuss the importanceof taking into account the tail of high energy secondary electrons in the spectrum for the simulation ofthe backscattering coefficient.