Measurement of work function in CF₄ gas

CF4 gas is useful in many applications, especially as a drift gas in particle detection chambers. In order to make accurate measurements of incident particles the properties of the drift gas must be well understood. An important property of CF4 which is important for determining particle energy in detectors, the work function, is disputed and not well known. This thesis measures the work function of CF4 gas for use in the Dark Matter Time Projection Chamber as well as all experiments that use CF4 as a drift gas. This was accomplished by bombarding CF4 in a drift chamber and ionizing it, then collecting the ionized electrons on an anode. The work function was found to be 33.8 ± 0.4 eV. This value was then crosschecked against P10, which is well understood.

Department dc:contributor.department

Massachusetts Institute of Technology. Dept. of Physics.

Grantor dc:publisher

Massachusetts Institute of Technology

Year dc:date.issued

2010

Author dc:creator

• Wolfe, Ian C

Advisor dc:contributor.advisor

• Denis Dujmic and Peter Fisher.

• Physics.

Statement dc:rights

• M.I.T. theses are protected by copyright. They may be viewed from this source for any purpose, but reproduction or distribution in any format is prohibited without written permission. See provided URL for inquiries about permission.

Licence dc:rights.uri

• http://dspace.mit.edu/handle/1721.1/7582

Language dc:language.iso

eng

Handle dc:identifier.uri

http://hdl.handle.net/1721.1/61268

OAI identifier oai:identifier

oai:dspace.mit.edu:1721.1/61268