Comprehensive Analysis of E478 Single-Component Epoxy Resin and Tungsten-E478 Interface for Metallic-Polymer Composite Electron Source Applications

Abstract

This study provides comprehensive elemental, optical, and energy gap characteristics of the E478 singlecomponent epoxy resin. This type of epoxy resin has imperative applications in medium voltage insulation and cold field emission of electrons. X-ray photoelectron spectroscopy (XPS), Raman spectroscopy, and hydrogen nuclear magnetic resonance (1H-NMR) were used to study the elemental and structural analyses, ultraviolet photoelectron spectroscopy (UPS) was used to obtain the local work function and the ionization potential energies, and ultraviolet/visible light spectroscopy (UV/VIS) was used to report the optical and energy gap characteristics of the epoxy resin being studied. Moreover, the UPS and UV/VIS analyses were merged to obtain the electron affinity of the E478 epoxy resin and to study the epoxy's energy band diagram and the tungsten-epoxy interface band structure. The results showed that the E478 epoxy resin is considered an n-type semiconductor of energy gap ∼3.94 eV, local work function ∼3.42 eV, ionization potential ∼6.10 eV, electron affinity ∼2.16 eV, and tungsten-epoxy Schottky contact barrier height ∼2.50 eV.