A low velocity microparticle facility for studying highfield impact phenomena in UHV

Abstract

Constructional and operational details are given of a recently developed UHV low velocity microparticle source that has been incorporated in an experimental system for studying normal incident microparticle 'reflection' processes that occur in a high voltage gap. The measured velocity and charge distributions of the mu m size particle flux range from approximately 1 to 300 m s^-1 and 1 to 6 fC respectively, with corresponding mean values of approximately 10 m s^-1 and 2 fC. Three types of low velocity particle bouncing process are illustrated.