A novel design of a retarding field electron energy analyzer with a cavity electrode providing extremely high energy resolution

Abstract

An electron energy analyzer based on the retarding electrostatic field generated by a cavity electrode was prototyped, where the designed energy resolution is smaller than 10 meV at acceleration voltages Vo less than 5 kV and a half angle spread θo less than 20 mrad for the incident electron beams with the scanning voltage range of 3 V. Precise energy resolution, however, has not been recognized experimentally because of the difficulties of equipping such a narrow energy spread electron source. This paper describes the principle of the newly developed energy analyzer and shows the obtained energy spectra from a Schottky emitter ZrO/W(100) with a tip of the curvature radius of 1.5 μm, which could highly reproduce the theoretically expected spectra at various emitter temperatures because of its predominantly thermal emission.