Transmission of electrons through the conical glass capillary with the grounded conducting outer surface

Abstract

The transmission of 1.5 keV-electrons through a conical glass capillary is reported. This study aims to understand the so-called guiding effect for the negatively charged particles (e.g. electrons). The guiding mechanism is understood quite well with positively charged particles in particular highly charged ions, but not clear with electrons, i.e., even the basic scheme mediated by the existence of negative charge patches to guide the electrons is still somewhat controversial. The study of the charging-up dynamics causing the electrons transport inside the capillary will shed light on this issue. In order to perform this, a data acquisition system has been setup to follow the time evolution of the twodimensional angular distribution of the transmitted electrons. The electrons are detected by the multi-channel plate (MCP) detector with a phosphor screen. The image from the phosphor screen is recorded by a charge-coupled device camera. The timing signals for the detected events are extracted from the back stack of the MCP detector and recorded by the data acquisition system, synchronized with the acquired images. The electron beam has a size of 0.5 mm0.5 mm and a divergence of less than 0.35. The inner diameter of the straight part of the capillary is 1.2 mm and the exit diameter is 225 m. A small conducting aperture of 0.3 mm in diameter is placed at the entrance of the capillary. Two-dimensional angular distribution of the transmitted electrons through conical glass capillary and its time evolution are measured. The results show that the transmission rate decreases and reaches to a constant value for the completely discharged glass capillary with time going by. The centroid of the angular distribution moves to an asymptotic value while the width remains unchanged. These transmission characteristics are different from those indicated in our previous work (2016 Acta Phys. Sin. 65 204103). The difference originates from the different manipulations of the capillary outer surface. A conducting layer is coated on the outer surface of the capillary and grounded in this work. This isolates various discharge/charge channels and forms a new stable discharge channel. The transmission rate as a function of the tilt angle shows that the allowed transmission occurs at the tilt angle limited by the geometrical factors, i.e., the geometrical opening angle given by the aspect ratio as well as the beam divergence. The transmission characteristics suggest that most likely there are formed no negative patches to facilitate the electron transmission through the glass capillary at this selected beam energy. It is different from that of highly charged ions, where the formation of the charge patches prohibits the close collisions between the following ions and guides them out of the capillary.