Technology of photocathode production

Thin film photocathodes have been developed both for gas and vacuum based photodetectors. Over the last years we have gained experience in fabricating large area reflective CsI and semi-transparent mono- and bialkali-cathodes, i.e. Rb//2Te and K//2CsSb. Today we are producing stable cathodes with excellent quantum efficiency for large MWPC based pad detectors and Hybrid Photodiodes on a routine basis. We give an overview of the technologies involved in the preparation of the substrates, the cathode processing and the encapsulation. The dedicated processing plants and instrumentation, required for monitoring and characterisation, is discussed.