Effect of rough surface morphology on secondary electron emission from metal surface

Abstract

Surface morphology is one of the main factor affecting the secondary electron (SE) emission from a rough metal surface. To overcome the limitation of only using the roughness to reveal the SE emission properties of a rough surface morphology, the fluctuation correlation length, which represents the spatial frequency of surface fluctuation, is thus introduced. In addition, the effects of the rough surface morphology on SE emission properties from the metal surface, which considers both the surface roughness and the fluctuation correlation length, are examined in this work. On the basis of the mechanism of electron interaction with morphology including the shading, multigeneration, and oblique effects, the SE emission properties versus the rough surface morphology, primary electron energy, and incident angle can be reasonably explained. The results further reveal the effect of surface morphology on SE emission, which gives a comprehensive insight into the control of SE emission properties using surface morphology.