Photoemission studies from metal by UV lasers

Abstract

Studies of electron emission by photoelectric process from pure Zn cathodes by UV laser beams were performed. As UV sources, two different wavelength excimer lasers were utilized in order to investigate the photoemission as pure photoelectric process and multiphoton process. The Schottky effect was also considered. The utilized laser sources were a KrF operating at 248nm wavelength (5eV), 23ns full width at half maximum (FWHM), and a XeCl operating at 308nm wavelength (4.02eV), 10ns FWHM. The cathode work function was 4.33eV, a value lower and higher than the photon energies of KrF and XeCl lasers, respectively. The photocathodes were tested in a vacuum photodiode cell at 10−7mbar. The cathodes were irradiated at normal incidence and the anode-cathode distance was set to 3.7mm. Due to the electrical breakdown into the photodiode gap, the maximum applied accelerating voltage was 20kV. Under the above experimental conditions a maximum of 5.4MV∕m electric field resulted. Under the space charge effect, the electron emission was higher than the one expected by the Child-Langmuir law. In saturation regime the electron emission increased with the accelerating voltage owing to the Schottky effect and plasma formation. The highest output current was achieved with the KrF laser at 14mJ laser energy. Its value was about 12A, corresponding to a global quantum efficiency of approximately 1×10−4, while the temporal quantum efficiency presented a maximum value of 1.1×10−4 located at the tail of the laser pulse. The estimated efficiencies with the XeCl laser were lower than the KrF ones as well as the output current and the plasma formation, although higher energy values than the KrF ones were utilized. By the results obtained, we conclude that the plasma generation is strongly due to the extracted current but weakly to the used laser intensity.