A comparison of two high performance inverse photoemission bandpass detectors

By performing inverse photoemission experiments on the same sample at the same time with two different detectors, their performance has been directly compared. The first detector is based on one of the most promising solid-state detector designs. It is comprised of a focused mesh electron multiplier and a CaF2 window. The second detector is a Geiger-Muller tube which uses dimethyl ether and a MgF2 window. Although it has already been demonstrated that detectors based on this design work, the dimethyl ether Geiger-Muller tubes are not widely used, and we show that it is essential to compensate for detector dead time effects for the detector to be practicably useful. Once this is done, the dimethyl ether Geiger-Muller tube has a sensitivity that is approximately 20 times greater than that of the solid-state detector. Furthermore, it is easy to operate and it does not appear to suffer from the problems that are normally associated with iodine Geiger-Muller detectors. (C) 1998 American Institute of Physics.