Secondary Electron Yield

Abstract

Electron beams impinging upon solid targets induce the emission of secondary electrons (SE). These are the electrons extracted from the atoms in the solid due to the inelastic electron-atom interaction with electrons of the incident beam or with the other secondary electrons travelling in the solid. Some secondary electrons , after a number of elastic and inelastic interactions with the atoms in the solid, reach the solid surface satisfying the conditions to emerge from it. As we already know, the spectrum of the secondary electrons is contaminated by a contribution of the backscattered primary electrons. As this contamination can be safely neglected in the great majority of the practical situations that investigators encounter in the laboratory experiments, this effect is usually ignored, at least as a first approximation.