Researchers from Nagoya University Synchrotron Radiation Research Center (NUSR), Los Alamos National Laboratory (LANL), Accelerator Laboratory, High Energy Accelerator Research Organization (KEK), UVSOR Facility, Institute for Molecular Science (IMS), National Institutes of Natural Sciences and Hiroshima Synchrotron Radiation Center at Hiroshima University have shown that photocathodes that produce electron beams for electron microscopes and advanced accelerators can be refreshed and rebuilt repeatedly without opening the devices that rely on them, provided the electron emitting materials are deposited on graphene.
The machines that rely on these electron emitters typically operate under high vacuum, said Los Alamos National Laboratory physicist Hisato Yamaguchi. By choosing graphene over materials like silicon or molybdenum, which tend to degrade during use, we can clean the substrate and redeposit electron-emitting materials without opening the vacuum. This can dramatically reduce downtime and labor involved in replacing photocathodes.
When the researchers renewed photocathodes on substrates of silicon or molybdenum, which are common materials for such devices, the photocathode performance degraded with each cycle. Following the same procedure with graphene serving as the substrate resulted in uniformly high electron emission, time and time again.
The researchers proposed that the resilience of photocathodes deposited on graphene surfaces was due to weaker binding between the emitter atoms and the underlying carbon layer. Numerical calculations based on the material properties of the emitters and graphene were consistent with the hypothesis.
The authors concluded their study by stating, Our results provide a foundation for graphene-based, reusable substrates for high [quantum efficiency] semiconductor photocathodes.