Study on emission properties of the nanopatical films

Microwave vacuum devices are used in a wide variety of areas, such as radar, space technology, electron accelerators and high-power microwave weapons at the future military frontiers. The cathodes, i.e., the electron sources, are the cores of the high-power microwave sources. Nanoparticles have many physical and chemical properties that their corresponding bulk materials do not have, such as surface effect and small-size effect, etc. Based on our previous work on the M-type cathode, we have proposed a strategy to develop a new type cathode. We deposited a layer of thin film of metal nanoparticles on the traditional Ba-W dispenser cathode. Thus the N-type cathode demonstrated some features different from the traditional M-type cathode. The study of the electron emission properties of this N-type cathode would promote the understanding on the electron emission and expand the applications of the nanomaterials. Nanoparticle thin films were grown by magnetron sputtering at room temperature. The results showed that the particle size of the films depended on the deposition rate in the nucleation stage of the films. The effect of thin film characteristics on thermionic emission of dispenser cathodes has been investigated. The chemical components of the vacuum background, the evaporants from an N-type cathode and an M-type cathode were respectively analyzed using a time of flight mass spectrometer (ToFMS). The results have proved that the ToFMS is one of the best tools for studying the evaporation phenomena of impregnated cathodes. Finally, the electron emission performance of the N-type cathodes was studied. I-V characteristics showed that the DC emission current density was 30 A/cm 2 and its lifetime was 600 h. The pulse emission current density was 108 A/cm 2 and its lifetime was 1500 h.