Field Emission of Liquid Metals in Alternating Fields

Abstract

It is experimentally shown that with oscillating electric fields of several GHz frequency at liquid conducting surfaces, the field emission of electrons and ions is possible due to the forming effect of the a.c. field on the surface

Electromigration occurences and its effects on metallic surfaces submitted to high electromagnetic field: A novel approach to breakdown in accelerators

“…The most surprising and important feature is that explosive emission can be excited on liquid metal sources in RF field at field gradients tenfold smaller than in pulsed DC field [89,[93][94][95][96]. The origin of this phenomenon is unclear, although the most frequently proposed mechanism is pre-heating of the surface through field emission.…”

Field-emission processes from a liquid–metal surface

“…4 It can be detected by applying a small positive bias U b to the emitter to shut off the faster electronic current component. The ion component is generated during the positive half-wave of the microwave field.…”

“…41 Experiments have been described 10,12 on preexcitation of a liquid surface with double pulses in initiating the explosive emission. For a particular sample of gallium-based capillary cathode with a vacuum gap d aϪc ϭ2 mm, the explosive emission pulse length in the microwave field was more than 10 Ϫ3 s, compared with 10 Ϫ7 s in the conventional pulsed mode.…”

“…4 In this case, it turns out to be possible to reach a stability of the process sufficiently higher than that in the static field, and to considerably reduce the mass transfer during emission. 4 In this case, it turns out to be possible to reach a stability of the process sufficiently higher than that in the static field, and to considerably reduce the mass transfer during emission.…”