High-resolution electron time-of-flight apparatus for the soft x-ray region

A gas-phase time-of-flight (TOF) apparatus, capable of supporting as many as six electron-TOF analyzers viewing the same interaction region, has been developed to measure energy- and angle-resolved electrons with kinetic energies up to 5 keV. Each analyzer includes a newly designed lens system that can retard electrons to about 2% of their initial kinetic energy without significant loss of transmission; the analyzers can thus achieve a resolving power (E/Delta/E) greater than 10(4) over a wide kinetic-energy range. Such high resolving power is comparable to the photon energy resolution of state-of-the-art synchrotron-radiation beamlines in the soft x-ray range, opening the TOF technique to numerous high-resolution applications. In addition, the angular placement of the analyzers, by design, permits detailed studies of nondipolar angular distribution effects in gas-phase photoemission. (C) 1998 American Institute of Physics. [S0034-6748(98)03611-9].