Electron gun using carbon-nanofiber field emitter.

An electron gun constructed using carbon-nanofiber (CNF) emitters and an electrostatic Einzel lens system has been characterized for the development of a high-resolution x-ray source. The CNFs used were grown on tungsten and palladium tips by plasma-enhanced chemical-vapor deposition. Electron beams with the energies of 10<E<20 keV were focused by the electrostatic lens and impinged on a W target for x-ray radiography. Analyzing the recorded x-ray radiographs, the focal spot size of the electron beam extracted from the CNFs was estimated to be D<50 microm in diameter. Superior performance was realized by using CNFs with larger fiber radii (100-500 nm) grown sparsely on the metal tips, which were installed in a holder at the short length L=0.5 mm.