Kimball Physics’ family of electron guns, electron sources and power supplies Jun 22, 2009

Guns can be focusable for small spot size for applications such as x-ray production, welding and RHEED; or flood beams for charge neutralization, electron beam scrubbing, space simulation and radiation damage studies. Our guns and power supplies cover a wide range of operating conditions from low energy (down to 1 eV) to high energy (up to 100keV), from low beam current (as low as 1nA) to high beam current (up to 20mA). Whatever your application, we have an electron gun to suit your needs.
Our electron guns are easily mounted on a user-supplied vacuum chamber using standard ConFlat fittings, or a user can select from our wide-variety of turnkey vacuum chambers.

The electron guns, with their matching power supplies, are complete subsystems ready to attach to any vacuum system, such as our Multi-CF family of chambers. A wide variety of models is available, from low-energy systems (5 eV-1000 eV) to high-energy systems (1 keV-100 keV). Beams produced range from flood beams to focusable, small spots depending upon your needs and applications. Beam currents range from nanoamperes to tens of milliamperes. Miniature sizes are also available.
Typical applications include: Surface physics (RHEED, ESD, IPES, LEED), space physics, vacuum science, accelerators / free electron lasers, electron lithography, X-ray generation, charge neutralization, semiconductor manufacturing equipment, gas excitation, and medical research.
Some key features and benefits of our electron guns and power supplies include:
- Independently adjustable beam energy, beam current allows for near constant beam current regardless of beam energy for those applications in which the number of electrons hitting a target must remain relatively constant.
- Spot size and deflection angle are independently adjustable on focusable guns allowing the beam to remain in the same spot through a range of energy settings.
- Excellent beam stability: Feedback-stabilized emission current control over several orders of magnitude, ± 0.1% per hour, for those applications where beam stability and constant electron flux is important.
- Energy Stability: ± 0.01% per hour, ± 0.02% per 8 hours at full output to minimize chromatic aberration.

- Tracking: All operating parameters can be set to be proportional to other parameters, for example, Focus can be set to vary with Energy to maintain spot size. This allows the user to maintain a consistent current density regardless of beam energy, for example.
- Storable control settings: Retrievable with a single Resume button, saving you time in setting up and adjusting the beam and providing more consistent results.
- Computer remote control / metering: LabViewTM, RS-232, or analog programming at ground potential allows the user to operate the electron guns and supplies under computer control and to monitor and track performance remotely.
- Mechanical alignment during full operation with beam and high voltage on allows for faster set-up and optimization of beam parameters saving you valuable time when replacing the firing unit or performing other maintenance.
- Fast pulsing / Beam blanking for those applications that incorporate analytical capabilities such as TOF spectroscopy or those applications requiring a burst of electrons without the high power associated with a constant beam.
- Deflection / Rastering for those applications, such as e-beam lithography that require fast deflection and rastering of the beam to write patterns on the substrate or imaging applications that require beam rastering.
- Gun-mounted Faraday cups to sample the beam current as it leaves the gun.
- Customer-replaceable firing units for easy maintenance, maximizing up time.