A battery-operated, stabilized, high-energy pulsed electron gun for the production of rare gas excimers

We report on the design of a new type of hot-filament electron gun delivering fairly high current (a few hundreds of mu A) at high voltage (up to 100 kV) in continuous or pulsed mode. Its novel features are that the filament is heated by means of a pack of rechargeable batteries floated atop the high-voltage power supply in order to get rid of bulky isolation transformers, and that the filament current and, hence, the electron gun current, is controlled by a feedback circuit including a superluminescent diode decoupled from the high voltage by means of an optical fiber. This electron gun is intended for general purposes, although we have especially developed it to meet the needs of our experiment on the infrared emission spectroscopy of rare gas excimers. Our experiment requires that the charge injection into the sample is pulsed and constant and stable in time. The new electron gun can deliver several tens of nC per pulse of electrons of energy up to 100 keV into the sample cell. The new design also eliminates ripples in the emission current and ensures up to 12 h of stable performance. (C) 2011 American Institute of Physics. [doi:10.1063/1.3636078]