Measurements of the Secondary Electron Emission from Rare Gases at 4.2K

Dependence of the secondary electron yield (SEY) from the primary beam incident energy and the coverage has been measured for neon, argon, krypton and xenon condensed on a target at 4.2K. The beam energy ranged between 100 eV and 3 keV, the maximal applied coverage have made up 12000, 4700, 2500 and 1400 monolayers correspondingly for neon, argon, krypton and xenon. The SEY results for these coverages can be considered as belonging only to investigated gases without influence of the target material. The SEY dependencies versus the primary beam energy for all gases comprise only an ascending part and therefore, the maximal measured SEY values have been obtained for the beam energy of 3keV and have made up 62, 73, 60.5 and 52 for neon, argon, krypton and xenon correspondingly. Values of the first cross-over have made up 21 eV for neon, 14 eV for argon, 12.5 eV for krypton and 10.5 eV for xenon. An internal field appearing across a film due to the beam impact can considerably affect the SEY measurements that demanded the beam current to be reduced till 9.0E-10A. Duration of the beam impact varied between 500 \mu sec and 250 \mu sec. It was found that reliable SEY measurements can also be taken on a charged surface if the charge was acquired due to beam impact with electrons of higher energy. All SEY measurements for once applied coverage have been carried out for whole range of incident energies from 3 keV down to 100 eV without renewing the film. Developing of pores inside of a deposited film can significantly increase the SEY as it was observed during warming up the target.Comment: 10 Pages - 25 figure

Measurements of the Secondary Electron Emission of Some Insulators

Charging up the surface of an insulator after beam impact can lead either to reverse sign of field between the surface and collector of electrons for case of thick sample or appearance of very high internal field for thin films. Both situations discard correct measurements of secondary electron emission (SEE) and can be avoided via reducing the beam dose. The single pulse method with pulse duration of order of tens microseconds has been used. The beam pulsing was carried out by means of an analog switch introduced in deflection plate circuit which toggles its output between "beam on" and "beam off" voltages depending on level of a digital pulse. The error in measuring the beam current for insulators with high value of SEE was significantly reduced due to the use for this purpose a titanium sample having low value of the SEE with DC method applied. Results obtained for some not coated insulators show considerable increase of the SEE after baking out at 3500C what could be explained by the change of work function. Titanium coatings on alumina exhibit results close to the ones for pure titanium and could be considered as an effective antimultipactor coating.Comment: 8 pages, 13 figure

The Influence of Air Exposures and Thermal Treatments on the Secondary Electron Yield of Copper

The variation of the secondary electron yield (SEY) of sputter-cleaned OFHC-copper has been studied as a function of air exposure duration at room temperature. After short air exposures of some seconds the maximum SEY (deltaMAX) of clean copper is reduced from 1.3 to less than 1.2, due to the oxidation of the copper surface. Prolonged air exposure increases the SEY steadily until, after about 8 days of atmospheric exposure, deltaMAX is higher than 2.Air exposures at higher temperatures have been found to be effective in reducing the SEY of technical copper surfaces. A 5-minute air exposure of copper at 350°C followed by a 350°C bake-out under vacuum reduces deltaMAX to about 1.05, which is lower than the value of pure copper and that of Cu2O

Practical diagnosis of cirrhosis in non-alcoholic fatty liver disease using currently available non-invasive fibrosis tests

Unlike for advanced liver fibrosis, the practical rules for the early non-invasive diagnosis of cirrhosis in NAFLD remain not well defined. Here, we report the derivation and validation of a stepwise diagnostic algorithm in 1568 patients with NAFLD and liver biopsy coming from four independent cohorts. The study algorithm, using first the elastography-based tests Agile3+ and Agile4 and then the specialized blood tests FibroMeterV3G and CirrhoMeterV3G, provides stratification in four groups, the last of which is enriched in cirrhosis (71% prevalence in the validation set). A risk prediction chart is also derived to allow estimation of the individual probability of cirrhosis. The predicted risk shows excellent calibration in the validation set, and mean difference with perfect prediction is only −2.9%. These tools improve the personalized non-invasive diagnosis of cirrhosis in NAFLD

Description of a dust particle detection system and measurements of particulate contamination from shock, gate valve, and ion pump under ultrahigh vacuum conditions

Dust particle contamination is known to be responsible for reduced quality and yield in microelectronic processing. However it may also limit the operation of particle accelerators as a result of beam lifetime reduction or enhanced field emission in radio-frequency accelerating cavities. Intrinsic dust contamination from sources such as valves or ion pumps has not yet been studied due to the inability of commercial particle counters to be able to detect across large cross sections under ultrahigh vacuum (UHV) conditions. This motivated the development of the dust particle detector described here which is able to quantify, in situ, the level of contamination on a representative part of a vacuum vessel. This system operates under UHV conditions and measures flashes of scattered light from free falling dust particles as they cross a thin laser light sheet across a 100 mm diam vacuum vessel. A calibration using microspheres of known diameter has allowed estimation of the particle size from the scattered signal amplitude. Measurements of particulate contamination generated by shocks onto the vessel walls are presented and determination of the height of origin of dust particles from their transit time across the irradiation sheet is discussed. Measurements of dust particle release right to operation of an all-metal gate valve are also presented in the form of time resolved measurements of dust occurrence during the open/close cycles of the valve, as well as histograms of the particle size distribution. A partial self-cleaning effect is witnessed during the first 10 operation cycles following valve installation. The operation of an ion pump has also been investigated and revealed that, in our conditions, particles were released only at pump startup. (C) 1998 American Institute of Physics. [S0034-6748(98)03110-4]