On the radiation of discontinuous gold films by electric current transmission

Abstract

Applying a strong electric field to a discontinuous metal film some electron and photon emission from discrete film centres (1) is observed parallel to the conduction current.The radiation mechanism of the film i s yet not clear. For clearing it up we decided to make a series of additional investigations to gather experimental data which might be generalized by a theoretical model. On the basis of the facts that the centres of electron emission and light coincide(2) and that the electron emission and radiation a r e starting at the same fields one may assume a tight connection between these effects. But as the electron emission due to electron gas heating (3) is defined by the power input into the film it proved firstly adviseable to study the dependence of the radiation characteristics upon the power input. This investigation i s just described in the present article.We used the standard technique of experimental lamp production (1). The spectral studies were performed by the photoelectric radiation registration method in the arrangement described in (4). Photomultipliers working in the regime of photon counting were used as photon detectors. Thus it was possible to study the characteristics of an individual centre and the total radiation of the whole film.The spectral resolution of the arrangement used was a s good a s 60 A . The accumulation time of the photon number within the wavelengths investigated could be changed from 1 to 100 s. The arrangement allowed to measure simultaneously the number of photons within a small spectral interval in one channel and the intensity of the unresolved light beam in another channel from the same source. 0

Electronic phenomena in nanodispersed thin films

“…Here we will consider the light emission from IMFs which occurs under conduction current excitation. We recall that both electrons and light are emitted from the same centres [38]. The existence of several intensity maxima in the light emission spectra (figure 6) may suggest that a few radiation mechanisms operate in parallel.…”

Light emission from Ag cluster films excited by conduction current

“…The electron emission takes place under such conditions. The electron emission is accompanied by the light emission and they correlate very closely [5].…”

“…Electron [1], ion [2] and light [1,3] emission are observed when passing an electrical current through metal clusters coupled by tunnelling [4]. There is a very good correlation between the light and electron emission [5]. Light emission has received far less attention than electron emission and is a relatively poorly understood phenomenon.…”

Emission Properties of Metal Nanoparticles

“…This can be concluded from the currentinduced light emission spectra for palladium [38], copper [39], silver [40,41,43], and gold [44,46] nanoparticle films showing a complex structure in contrast to the spectrum of thermal radiation with a cutoff at the wavelength l ¼ ffiffi ffi 2 p pa (emitting and adsorption of light with wavelength exceeding the diameter a of particle by a factor of ffiffi ffi 2 p p is prohibited [47]). The complex structure of the light emission spectra also indicates that the decelerating radiation (Bremsstrahlung) cannot be responsible for the observed radiation, because in this case one would observe a sharp high-energy maximum and gradual decrease toward low energies.…”