EVALUATION METHOD FOR INTEGRAL ENERGY-DISTRIBUTIONS OF FIELD-EMITTED IONS

A general method is derived for evaluating integral energy distributions of field-emitted ions. Extrapolation to zero intensity at which principally no measurements can be made is achieved mathematically by using the experimental data in the form of the logarithms of normalized intensities vs. voltage δ between emitter and retarder and fitting the resulting curve by a hyperbolic function. The obtained physically interesting onset of the integral distribution δo is nearly free of arbitrariness and limits of the statistical error can be estimated. © 1979.