Rates of electron emission from negatively charged, impact-heated fullerenes

Chahan Yeretzian, Klavs Hansen, Robert L. Whetten

Research output: Contribution to journalArticlepeer-review

58 Scopus citations

Abstract

Thermal emission of electrons is ordinarily considered to be exclusively a property of macroscopic condensed matter. Slow electron emission occurs for certain small metal clusters as well as for silicon and carbon clusters, but the nature of this process has not been established. Electron emission rates have been obtained and analyzed from extensive real-time measurements on negatively charged fullerenes for several sizes and over a wide, continuous range of energies. These results confirm that delayed electron emission is a simple activated process that depends strongly on the internal energy and size of the cluster and that it has a common underlying mechanism, independent of size. However, the Arrhenius form deduced is inconsistent with the emission rate theory used for bulk surfaces. These results allow the question of the correct microscopic description of this newly observed electron emission process to be assessed.

Original languageEnglish (US)
Pages (from-to)652-656
Number of pages5
JournalScience
Volume260
Issue number5108
DOIs
StatePublished - 1993
Externally publishedYes

ASJC Scopus subject areas

  • General

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