Dynamic secondary electron emission in rough composite materials

Abstract

The interaction of ionizing radiation with matter is of critical importance in numerous areas of science and technology like space and vacuum technology and even medicine and biotechnology. Secondary electron emission is a consequence of electron irradiation on materials. We achieve extremely low secondary electron emission yield values smaller than 0.2, even up to incident electron energies ~1 keV, due to an undocumented synergy between neighbouring metal and dielectric domains in composite samples. To investigate this experimental discovery, we propose a simple 3D model where the dielectric and metallic domains are arranged in parallel and interleaved. The proposed surface profile has a triangular shape to model the surface roughness. We obtain a continuous equation to describe the electric field that arises between grounded conductors and charged dielectrics domains. The calculated trajectories of secondary electrons in this 3D geometry are used to predict dynamic secondary emission yield, which strongly depends on the charge accumulated in the dielectric domains. This research paves the way to design new materials of low secondary emission yield, addressing the technological problem not yet resolved to inhibit the electron avalanche in RF equipment that limit their maximum working power.