3 research outputs found
Auger de-excitation of metastable molecules at metallic surfaces
We study secondary electron emission from metallic surfaces due to Auger
de-excitation of diatomic metastable molecules. Our approach is based on an
effective model for the two active electrons involved in the process -- a
molecular electron described by a linear combination of atomic orbitals when it
is bound and a two-center Coulomb wave when it is not and a metal electron
described by the eigenfunctions of a step potential -- and employs Keldysh
Green's functions. Solving the Dyson equation for the retarded Green's function
by exponential resummation we are able to treat time-nonlocal self-energies and
to avoid the wide-band approximation.Results are presented for the
de-excitation of \NitrogenDominantMetastableState\ on aluminum and tungsten and
discussed in view of previous experimental and theoretical investigations. We
find quantitative agreement with experimental data for tungsten indicating that
the effective model captures the physics of the process quite well. For
aluminum we predict secondary electron emission due to Auger de-excitation to
be one to two orders of magnitude smaller than the one found for resonant
charge-transfer and subsequent auto-detachment.Comment: 15 pages, 9 figures, revised version using an improved
single-electron basi
Electron energy loss spectroscopy of wall charges in plasma-facing dielectrics
Abstract
We propose a setup enabling electron energy loss spectroscopy to determine the density of the electrons accumulated by an electropositive dielectric in contact with a plasma. It is based on a two-layer structure inserted into a recess of the wall. Consisting of a plasma-facing film made out of the dielectric of interest and a substrate layer, the structure is designed to confine the plasma-induced surplus electrons to the region of the film. The charge fluctuations they give rise to can then be read out from the backside of the substrate by near specular electron reflection. To obtain in this scattering geometry a strong charge-sensitive reflection maximum due to the surplus electrons, the film has to be most probably pre-n-doped and sufficiently thin with the mechanical stability maintained by the substrate. Taking electronegative CaO as a substrate layer we demonstrate the feasibility of the proposal by calculating the loss spectra for Al2O3, SiO2, and ZnO films. In all three cases we find a reflection maximum strongly shifting with the density of the surplus electrons and suggest to use it for charge diagnostics