Metal-alloyed “cold” secondary emission cathode

A short review of metal-alloy palladium-barium cathode properties used in magnetron microwave amplifiers has been presented. The devices of this class only use secondary electron emission cathode. In order to avoid the device excitation, thermionic emission must be excluded, so, cathode works in the so-called “cold” mode. Physical properties of metal-alloyed (Pd-Ba) secondary electron emission cathodes are shortly discussed.