Experimental study of destructive effects on materials with different energy electron bombardment

In the study of breakdown in high power microwave (HPM) devices, researchers pay attention to the plasma effects caused by material ablation under electron bombardment. In this paper, the destruction of material under the bombardment of electrons with a range of energies around 100 keV is investigated. The simulation results reveal that low-energy electrons are more likely to cause ablation damage to the material, with the location of maximal energy deposition density close to the material’s surface. The experiment has a good agreement with the simulation results. Compared with high-energy electrons, the damage traces bombarded by low-energy electrons are more serious, possessing the characteristics of large size and shallow depth. This abnormal physics phenomenon provides a reference for the breakdown of HPM devices and the surface treatment of materials by pulsed electron beams.