NSF Award
9760843
*** 9760843 Jamison This Small Business Innovation Research Phase I project is to develop a robust field emission electron source using diamond microtips as a replacement for standard hot filament cathodes. The project will use nanocrystaline diamond microtips grown in a silicon mold to produce diamond field emission sources that are direct replacements for hot filament cathodes used in many scientific instruments. Phase I of this project will test the applicability of diamond microtips for use as a cold field emission source of electrons to replace hot filaments in electron guns. The concept will first be tested by replacing the hot filament cathode in an electron gun by the diamond microtip and obtaining preliminary operating parameters (e.g. maximum emission current, emission voltage, etc.) for the gun. This information will then be used to design a direct replacement tip for hot filament electron guns. Because diamond microtips have a very low effective work function, the Wehnelt power supply in most electron guns should serve as the extractor supply. The anticipated benefits of simple field emission replacement for a hot filament electron gun are many, They range a high brightness "burn-out-proof", low energy spread electron gun for scientific applications, to robust, smaller spot size electron guns for high resolution TV tubes. ***
