Experimental investigation of the effect of the internal space charge accumulation on the electron emission yield of insulators submitted to e-irradiation: application to polycrystalline MgO

Abstract

Experiments are performed on polycrystalline MgO in order to investigate the internal effects of positive charging on the total electron emission yield (TEEY) under low incident electron fluence (a few to hundreds of fC mm−2) at 200 eV electron irradiation energy. It is experimentally shown that the Coulomb-attractive recombination of electrons undergoing emission with holes generated by the previously emitted electrons significantly affects the TEEY. Furthermore, quantitative analyses of experimental data are done to deduce the electron–hole recombination cross-section which is found to be of a few 10−11 cm−2.