Thermionic Emission

Thermionic emission is the heat-induced flow of charge carriers from a surface or over a potential-energy barrier. This occurs because the thermal energy given to the carrier overcomes the binding potential, also known as work function of the metal. The charge carriers can be electrons or ions, and in older literature are sometimes referred to as "thermions". After emission, a charge will initially be left behind in the emitting region that is equal in magnitude and opposite in sign to the total charge emitted. But if the emitter is connected to a battery, then this charge left behind will be neutralized by charge supplied by the battery, as the emitted charge carriers move away from the emitter, and finally the emitter will be in the same state as it was before emission. The thermionic emission of electrons is also known as thermal electron emission.

The classical example of thermionic emission is the emission of electrons from a hot cathode, into a vacuum (archaically known as the Edison effect) in a vacuum tube. The hot cathode can be a metal filament, a coated metal filament, or a separate structure of metal or carbides or borides of transition metals. Vacuum emission from metals tends to become significant only for temperatures over 1000 K. The science dealing with this phenomenon has been known as thermionics, but this name seems to be gradually falling into disuse.

The term "thermionic emission" is now also used to refer to any thermally-excited charge emission process, even when the charge is emitted from one solid-state region into another. This process is crucially important in the operation of a variety of electronic devices and can be used for electricity generation (e.g., thermionic converter, electrodynamic tether) or cooling. The magnitude of the charge flow increases dramatically with increasing temperature.

Contents [hide]

1 History

2 Richardson's Law

3 Schottky emission

4 Photon-enhanced thermionic emission

5 See also

6 References

7 External links

[edit] History

The Edison effect in a diode tube. A diode tube is connected in two configurations, one has a flow of electrons and the other does not. Note that the arrows represent electron current, not conventional current.Because the electron was not identified as a separate physical particle until the 1897 work of J. J. Thomson, the word "electron" was not used when discussing experiments that took place before this date.

The phenomenon was initially reported in 1873 by Frederick Guthrie in Britain. While doing work on charged objects, Guthrie discovered that a red-hot iron sphere with a positive charge would lose its charge (by somehow discharging it into air). He also found that this did not happen if the sphere had a negative charge.[1] Other early contributors included Hittorf (1869–1883), Goldstein (1885), and Elster and Geitel (1882–1889).

The effect was rediscovered by Thomas Edison on February 13, 1880, while trying to discover the reason for breakage of lamp filaments and uneven blackening (darkest near one terminal of the filament) of the bulbs in his incandescent lamps.

Edison built several experiment bulbs, some with an extra wire, a metal plate, or foil inside the bulb which was electrically separate from the filament, and thus could serve as an electrode. He connected a galvanometer, a device used to measure current, to the output of the extra metal electrode. When the foil was charged negatively relative to the filament, no charge flowed between the filament and the foil. We now know that this was because the filament was emitting electrons, and thus were not attracted to the negatively charged foil. In addition, charge did not flow from the foil to the filament because the foil was not heated enough to emit charge (later called thermionic emission). However, when the foil was given a more positive charge than the filament, negative charge (in the form of electrons) could flow from the filament through the vacuum to the foil. This one-way current was called the Edison effect (although the term is occasionally used to refer to thermionic emission itself). He found that the current emitted by the hot filament increased rapidly with increasing voltage, and filed a patent application for a voltage-regulating device using the effect on November 15, 1883 (U.S. patent 307,031,[2] the first US patent for an electronic device). He found that sufficient current would pass through the device to operate a telegraph sounder.