Characterization of Carbon Coatings with Low Secondary Electron Yield

Amorphous carbon (a-C) coatings can reliably be produced with a maximum secondary electron yield (SEY) close to 1 at room temperature. Measurements at low temperature (LHe) are in progress. Analysis by X-ray Photoemission Spectroscopy (XPS) shows a correlation between the lineshape of C1s spectrum in XPS and the maximum SEY of the investigated samples. The initial level of oxygen on the surface of the various samples does not seem to be related to the initial maximum SEY value. However, the increase of the SEY with air exposure time on each individual sample is related to the amount of oxygen containing adsorbates. Storage in different environments has been investigated (static vacuum, aluminium foil, dry nitrogen and desiccators), and shows significant differences in the “aging” behaviour. Aging is very moderate when storing samples wrapped in aluminium foil in air. Samples which have undergone aging due to inappropriate storage can be recovered nearly to the initial value of their SEY by surface treatments such as conditioning by electron beam, annealing under vacuum and ion bombardment. However, an enhanced sensitivity to air exposure is observed for most of these curing methods.