Electron-Hop-Funnel Measurements and Comparison With the Lorentz-2E Simulation

Abstract

Abstract-Electron hop funnels have been fabricated using a Low Temperature Co-Fired Ceramic (LTCC). Measurements of the hop funnel I-V curve and electron energy distribution have been made using gated field emitters as the electron source. The charged particle simulation Lorentz 2E has been used to model the hop funnel charging and to predict the I-V and energy characteristics. The results of this comparison indicate that the simulation can be used to design hop funnel structures for use in various applications.

Simulation of Electron Hop Funnels Using Version 9.2 of Lorentz-2E

“…An explanation of the Lorentz 2E simulation of the electron hopping mechanism and of the I-V curve generation with Lorentz 2E is described here. More details of the Lorentz 2E simulation of hop funnels can be found in [6,7].…”

“…Particles are simulated as rays which contain a fixed amount of charge. The amount of charge that each ray contains is an input parameter to the simulation and was selected to match previous work [6]. When primary electrons strike the funnel wall, the energy of the bombarding electron is evaluated, and the number of secondary electrons that are emitted is based upon the Vaughan secondary electron emission model [11].…”

“…Finally, the fourth step of the method is to evaluate the surface charge on the funnel wall for each of the 600 discrete elements (segments) of the funnel wall [6] by dividing the charge on each segment by the surface area of the segment. Because the electron hop funnel is a cone, each segment forms a frustum of a cone surface.…”

“…I-V curves have been successfully measured and simulated [1,4,[6][7][8] for various types of hop funnels. The I-V curve from previous simulation work [7], using version 8 of Lorentz 2E, is shown in Fig.…”

“…The work presented here investigates the modification of the model used in previous work [6,7] and compares the new version (V9.2) of Lorentz 2E to the old version (V8.0). The curve presented in Fig.…”