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Register a new userCalculation of secondary electron emission yields from low-energy electron deposition in tungsten surfaces
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We present calculations of secondary electron emission (SEE) yields in tungsten as a function of primary electron energies between 50 eV and 1 keV and incidence angles between 0 and 90{deg}. We conduct a review of the established Monte Carlo methods to simulate multiple electron scattering in solids and select the best suited to study SEE in high-Z metals. We generate secondary electron yield and emission energy functions of the incident energy and angle and fit them to bivariate fitting functions using symbolic regression. We compare the numerical results with experimental data, with good agreement found. Our calculations are the first step towards studying SEE in nanoarchitected surfaces for electric propulsion chamber walls.
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Surface erosion and secondary electron emission (SEE) have been identified as the most critical life-limiting factors in channel walls of Hall-effect thrusters for space propulsion. Recent wall concepts based on micro-architected surfaces have been proposed to mitigate surface erosion and SEE. The idea behind these designs is to take advantage of very-high surface-to-volume ratios to reduce SEE and ion erosion by internal trapping and redeposition. This has resulted in renewed interest to study electron-electron processes in relevant thruster wall materials. In this work, we present calculations of SEE yields in micro-porous hexagonal BN surfaces using stochastic simulations of electron-material interactions in discretized surface geometries. Our model consists of two complementary parts. First we study SEE as a function of primary electron energy and incidence angle in flat surfaces using Monte Carlo simulations of electron multi-scattering processes. The results are then used to represent the response function of discrete surface elements to individual electron rays generated using a ray-tracing Monte Carlo model. We find that micro-porous surfaces result in SEE yield reductions of over 50% in the energy range experienced in Hall thrusters. This points to the suitability of these micro-architected surface concepts to mitigate SEE-related issues in compact electric propulsion devices.
Secondary electron emission (SEE) from solids plays an important role in many areas of science and technology.1 In recent years, there has been renewed interest in the experimental and theoretical studies of SEE. A recent study proposed that the reflectivity of very low energy electrons from solid surface approaches unity in the limit of zero electron energy2,3,4, If this was indeed the case, this effect would have profound implications on the formation of electron clouds in particle accelerators,2-4 plasma measurements with electrostatic Langmuir probes, and operation of Hall plasma thrusters for spacecraft propulsion5,6. It appears that, the proposed high electron reflectivity at low electron energies contradicts to numerous previous experimental studies of the secondary electron emission7. The goal of this note is to discuss possible causes of these contradictions.
Secondary electron emission (SEE) from inner linings of plasma chambers in electric thrusters for space propulsion can have a disruptive effect on device performance and efficiency. SEE is typically calculated using elastic and inelastic electron scattering theory by way of Monte Carlo simulations of independent electron trajectories. However, in practice the method can only be applied for ideally smooth surfaces and thin films, not representative of real material surfaces. Recently, micro-architected surfaces with nanometric features have been proposed to mitigate SEE and ion-induced erosion in plasma-exposed thruster linings. In this paper, we propose an approach for calculating secondary electron yields from surfaces with arbitrarily-complex geometries using an extension of the emph{ray tracing} Monte Carlo (RTMC) technique. We study nanofoam structures with varying porosities as representative micro-architected surfaces, and use RTMC to generate primary electron trajectories and track secondary electrons until their escape from the outer surface. Actual surfaces are represented as a discrete finite element meshes obtained from X-ray tomography images of tungsten nanofoams. At the local level, primary rays impinging into surface elements produce daughter rays of secondary electrons whose number, energies and angular characteristics are set by pre-calculated tables of SEE yields and energies from ideally-flat surfaces. We find that these micro-architected geometries can reduce SEE by up to 50% with respect to flat surfaces depending on porosity and primary electron energy.
In a lot of systems, charge transport is governed by local features rather than being a global property as suggested by extracting a single resistance value. Consequently, techniques that resolve local structure in the electronic potential are crucial for a detailed understanding of electronic transport in realistic devices. Recently, we have introduced a new potentiometry method based on low-energy electron microscopy (LEEM) that utilizes characteristic features in the reflectivity spectra of layered materials [1]. Performing potentiometry experiments in LEEM has the advantage of being fast, offering a large field of view and the option to zoom in and out easily, and of being non-invasive compared to scanning-probe methods. However, not all materials show clear features in their reflectivity spectra. Here we, therefore, focus on a different version of low-energy electron potentiometry (LEEP) that uses the mirror mode transition, i.e. the drop in electron reflectivity around zero electron landing energy when they start to interact with the sample rather than being reflected in front of it. This transition is universal and sensitive to the local electrostatic surface potential (either workfunction or applied potential). It can consequently be used to perform LEEP experiments on a broader range of material compared to the method described in Ref. [1]. We provide a detailed description of the experimental setup and demonstrate LEEP on workfunction-related intrinsic potential variations on the Si(111) surface and for a metal-semiconductor-metal junction with an external bias applied. In the latter, we visualize the Schottky effect at the metal-semiconductor interface. Finally, we compare how robust the two LEEP techniques discussed above are against image distortions due to sample inhomogeneities or contamination.
The authors report in situ Auger electron spectroscopy (AES) of the surfaces of complex oxides thin films grown by pulsed laser deposition (PLD). The authors demonstrate the utility of the technique in studying chemical composition by collecting characteristic Auger spectra of elements from samples such as complex oxide thin films and single crystals as well as metal foils. In the case of thin films, AES studies can be performed with single unit cell precision by monitoring thickness during deposition with reflection high energy electron diffraction (RHEED). The authors address some of the challenges in achieving in situ and real time AES studies on complex oxide thin films grown by PLD. Sustained layer-by-layer PLD growth of a CaTiO3/LaMnO3 superlattice allows depth-resolved chemical composition analysis during the growth process. The evolution of the Auger spectra of the elements from individual layers were used to perform chemical analysis with monolayer-depth resolution.
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