Procedures and equipment for studying surface phenomena through field effect, by means of an emission point

摘要

A device for investigating surface phenomena by field emission contains an emission point in an evacuatable enclosure facing a fluorescent screen. The point is desorbed by a first pulse which produces sufficient heating of the point to attain substantially complete desorption and field emission or field desorption is produced by a second pulse spaced a controllable time after the desorption pulse. Repetitive measurements are possible by producing a train of the first and second pulses during which parameters can be varied and the results observed. Methods are disclosed for determining the temperature of the point from the measured field emission both by relating field emission to temperature and by relating temperature to desorption.