Thermionic emission current in a single barrier varactor

From I-V measurements on Single Barrier Varactors (SBV) at different temperatures we concluded that thermionic emission across the barrier of the actual device is mainly due to transport through the X band. The same structure was also modeled with a one-dimensional drift-diffusion model, including a 'boundary condition' for thermionic emission across the heterojunction interface. By including thermionic field emission through the top of the triangular barrier of a biased diode and the effect of a non-abrupt interface at the heterojunction, we obtained good agreement between the modeled and measured I-V characteristics

Study shows effect of surface preparations on improving thermionic emission

Specimen thermionic emitters were electropolished and electroetched to study the effect of surface preparations on improving thermionic emission. The best technique found was to electropolish the annealed rhenium surface and then electroetch it. The effect of electroetching was to remove other crystal planes faster than basal planes

Diffusion and electron emission properties of duplex refractory metal thermionic emitters

Diffusion and electron emission properties of duplex refractory metal thermionic emitter

Some High Temperature Diffusion Studies on Materials of Thermionic Interest

High temperature diffusion studies between uranium materials and refractory metals and alloys - thermionic emission propertie

Attractive Potential around a Thermionically Emitting Microparticle

We present a simulation study of the charging of a dust grain immersed in a plasma, considering the effect of electron emission from the grain (thermionic effect). It is shown that the OML theory is no longer reliable when electron emission becomes large: screening can no longer be treated within the Debye-Huckel approach and an attractive potential well forms, leading to the possibility of attractive forces on other grains with the same polarity. We suggest to perform laboratory experiments where emitting dust grains could be used to create non-conventional dust crystals or macro-molecules.Comment: 3 figures. To appear on Physical Review Letter

Theory of thermionic emission from a two-dimensional conductor and its application to a graphene-semiconductor Schottky junction

The standard theory of thermionic emission developed for three-dimensional semiconductors does not apply to two-dimensional materials even for making qualitative predictions because of the vanishing out-of-plane quasiparticle velocity. This study reveals the fundamental origin of the out-of-plane charge carrier motion in a two-dimensional conductor due to the finite quasiparticle lifetime and huge uncertainty of the out-of-plane momentum. The theory is applied to a Schottky junction between graphene and a bulk semiconductor to derive a thermionic constant, which, in contrast to the conventional Richardson constant, is determined by the Schottky barrier height and Fermi level in graphene.Comment: 4+ pages, 3 figs, 60 refs, a somewhat compressed version has been published in AP