Effects of Energetic Electron and Proton Irradiation on Electron Emission Yield of Polyimide Induced by Electron and Photon

Abstract

As the electron emission yield induced by electron and photon plays a key role in surface potential of spacecraft materials, the ground based degradations including 500 keV electron and 50 keV proton irradiation with 4 different fluences were conducted for the polyimide film separately. Based on the developed measuring systems, the comparative measurements of total electron emission yield and photoelectron emission yield were carried out for the virgin and degraded polyimide samples respectively. The total electron emission yield and photoelectron emission yield tended to have different variation tendency after high energy electron and proton irradiation. The Monte-Carlo analysis software Casino and SRIM were used to analysis the distribution and stopping power of electron and proton respectively. According to the measurement results and analysis, the free radicals caused by irradiation was considered to be the main effect for polyimide films, which can primarily reveal the degradation mechanism of energetic electron and proton on the emission yield of polyimide.