Nano-scale investigations of electric-dipole-layer enhanced field and thermionic emission from high current density cathodes

Cesium iodide coated graphitic fibers and scandate cathodes are two important electron emission technologies. The coated fibers are utilized as field emitters for high power microwave sources. The scandate cathodes are promising thermionic cathode materials for pulsed power vacuum electron devices. This work attempts to understand the fundamental physical and chemical relationships between the atomic structure of the emitting cathode surfaces and the superior emission characteristics of these cathodes.;Ab initio computational modeling in conjunction with experimental investigations was performed on coated fiber cathodes to understand the origin of their very low turn on electric field, which can be reduced by as much as ten-fold compared to uncoated fibers. Copious amounts of cesium and oxygen were found co-localized on the fiber, but no iodine was detected on the surface. Additional ab initio studies confirmed that cesium oxide dimers could lower the work function significantly. Surface cesium oxide dipoles are therefore proposed as the source of the observed reduction in the turn on electric field. It is also proposed that emission may be further enhanced by secondary electrons from cesium oxide during operation. Thermal conditioning of the coated cathode may be a mechanism by which surface cesium iodide is converted into cesium oxide, promoting the depletion of iodine by formation of volatile gas.;Ab initio modeling was also utilized to investigate the stability and work functions of scandate structures. The work demonstrated that monolayer barium-scandium-oxygen surface structures on tungsten can dramatically lower the work function of the underlying tungsten substrate from 4.6 eV down to 1.16 eV, by the formation of multiple surface dipoles. On the basis of this work, we conclude that high temperature kinetics force conventional dispenser cathodes (barium-oxygen monolayers on tungsten) to operate in a non-equilibrium compositional steady state with higher than optimal work functions of ∼2 eV. We hypothesize that scandium enables the barium-oxygen surface monolayer kinetics to access a more thermodynamically stable phase with reported work functions as low as ∼1.3 eV.