Total cross-sections for positron and electron scattering from α-tetrahydrofurfuryl alcohol

In this paper, we report original measurements of total cross-sections (TCSs) for positron scattering from an important biomolecule, α-tetrahydrofurfuryl alcohol (THFA). The energy range of these measurements was 0.15–50.15 eV, whereas the energy resolution was ∼260 meV. In addition, we report theoretical results, calculated within the independent-screened additivity rule (IAM-SCAR) formalism, on the corresponding electron impact total cross-sections. In this case, the energy range is 1–10 000 eV. With the advent of new particle track simulation codes, which incorporate accurate atomic and molecular data in order to provide interaction details at the nanoscale, interest in positron and electron TCSs has enjoyed something of a recent renaissance as they specify the mean free path between collisions in such codes. Because the present data are, to the best of our knowledge, the first TCSs to be reported for positron scattering from THFA, they fill an important void in the knowledge available to us from the literature.