Abstract In the kiloelectronvolt (keV) and sub‐keV electron energy range, the knowledge of the exact energy deposited of electrons on solid state detectors with a dead layer depends strongly on the fraction of electrons backscattered and implanted. A new Monte Carlo (MC) simulation approach has been developed to describe electron scattering processes from silicon. In this study, we show the results concerning the energy deposited in the dead layer and sensitive volume of the silicon detector. The obtained straggling functions in the dead layer show that the energy deposited depends strongly on the inelastic process and the MC simulation technique used. Copyright © 2010 John Wiley & Sons, Ltd.