Development of optical field emitter arrays

Optical field emitters are electron emission sources actuated by incident light. Optically actuated field emitters may produce ultrafast pulses of electrons when excited by ultrafast optical pulses, thus making them of interest for specific applications such as ultrafast electron microscopy, diffraction and spectroscopy; and as electron sources for X-ray generation. Recently proposed intense, coherent, and compact X-ray sources require low emittance, high brightness and short duration electron bunches that form a periodic pattern in the transverse plane. This thesis theoretically developed optical field emitter arrays that are suitable for use as the electron source for this novel X-ray source. Studies of several optical field emitter array structures, including vertically-standing gold nanopillars and silicon tips, in-plane gold nanostructures, and metallic line gratings, were performed via theoretical analysis and numerical simulations. Enhancement of the optical nearfield and power absorption was achieved by geometrical and plasmonic effects, leading to enhanced charge yield from the optical field emitter arrays.

Department dc:contributor.department

Massachusetts Institute of Technology. Department of Electrical Engineering and Computer Science

Grantor dc:publisher

Massachusetts Institute of Technology

Year dc:date.issued

2013

Author dc:creator

• Yang, Yujia, Ph. D. Massachusetts Institute of Technology

Advisor dc:contributor.advisor

• Karl K. Berggren.

• Electrical Engineering and Computer Science.

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/1721.1/84858

OAI identifier oai:identifier

oai:dspace.mit.edu:1721.1/84858