Title: Effect of sputtering with ions on field emission from different metallic surfaces

Authors: Süleyman Soykarcı; Pavel Serbun; Yahya Öz; Dirk Lützenkirchen-Hecht

Addresses: Department of Physics, University of Wuppertal, 42119 Wuppertal, Germany ' Department of Physics, University of Wuppertal, 42119 Wuppertal, Germany ' Department of Physics, University of Wuppertal, 42119 Wuppertal, Germany ' Department of Physics, University of Wuppertal, 42119 Wuppertal, Germany

Abstract: The main field limitations of modern particle accelerators play an important role in various studies. One of the most important limitations is the enhanced field emission (EFE) having a parasitic effect on the quality of accelerators. Many studies concentrate on different methods for improving the surface quality of cavity metals which is correlated to the beforementioned effect. This manuscript considers a different approach by ion irradiation. Systematic analyses of the surfaces and the EFE from polycrystalline copper (Cu) and large grain niobium (Nb) before and after argon-ion (Ar+) irradiation are performed. Results show that the suppression of the EFE might be achievable with this strategy which might yield an enhanced performance of particle accelerators that use normally conductive structures since the surface roughness Ra of Cu samples drops from 35-107 nm to 3-4 nm in some crystal grains which improves the surface quality significantly. Remarkably, this effect depends on the crystal orientation and an EFE-enhancing effect can also be observed for some grains which might be useful for varying engineering applications.

Keywords: accelerator technology; field emission; irradiation effects; parasitic effects; sputtering; surface quality.

DOI: 10.1504/IJSURFSE.2022.124009

International Journal of Surface Science and Engineering, 2022 Vol.16 No.2, pp.91 - 104

Received: 28 May 2021
Accepted: 07 Oct 2021

Published online: 08 Jul 2022 *

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