Characterization of Detector and Electron Source for Inverse Photoemission Spectrometer

Abstract

The inverse photo-emission spectroscopy (IPES) is a powerful tool to probe the unoccupied energy states of materials, such the surface states of metals or the unoccupied states of high temperature superconductors. IPES instruments are not commercially available, requiring the custom design and characterization of instrumentation in order to perform measurements. An IPES instrument was previously developed by our group. However, the initial design of the photon detectors was unsuccessful. In this thesis I present testing and characterization of a new generation of Geiger photon detectors for IPES measurements that we show to reliably measure photons resulting from inverse photoemission. Characterization of the photon detectors and electron gun, required for performing successful IPES measurements are presented. Finally, initial angle resolved IPES measurements on Cu (100) surfaces are presented, show good agreement with previous work.