Research on mechanical vibration impacts of GaAs photocathode photoemission performance

The GaAs photocathode has widely been used in optoelectronic devices such as image intensifiers, photomultiplier tubes, but these devices is inevitable to withstand a variety of mechanical vibration. In order to study the mechanical vibration impact on the photoemission performance of GaAs photocathode, GaAs photocathode image intensifier is researched in this paper. The spectral response of the GaAs photocathode before and after 5~55Hz scan frequency, 14Hz, 33Hz, 52Hz stay frequency, 5～60Hz scan frequency mechanical vibration respectively was tested, then the parameter of photocathode was calculated by MATLAB software according to quantum efficiency formula, the quantum efficiency curve were fitted. The results show that surface escape probability is increased after photocathode is subjected to mechanical vibration, so that its photoemission performance will be improved. We think this phenomenon is due to the GaAs photocathode surface Cs-O reconstruction. This finding provided a new method to enhance the photoemission performance of photocathode.