Practical XHV electron gun

Abstract

We have developed practical XHV chambers of a electron gun, of which the operating pressures are 1 × 10-9 Pa in a stainless-steel one and 4 × 10-9 Pa in a permalloy one. By mounting a noble single-atom electron source with high brightness and high spatial coherence on the electron gun including electron optics, we demonstrated highly collimated electron-beam emission: ∼80% of the total emission current entered the electron optics. This ratio was two or three orders of magnitude higher than those of the conventional electron sources. In XHV, in addition, we confirmed stable electron emission up to 20 nA, which results in the specimen current high enough for scanning electron microscopes.