- Physical Review Journals
All JournalsPhysics Magazine

Physical Review Applied

Reuse & Permissions

It is not necessary to obtain permission to reuse this article or its components as it is available under the terms of the Creative Commons Attribution 4.0 International license. This license permits unrestricted use, distribution, and reproduction in any medium, provided attribution to the author(s) and the published article's title, journal citation, and DOI are maintained. Please note that some figures may have been included with permission from other third parties. It is your responsibility to obtain the proper permission from the rights holder directly for these figures.

Export citation

Export citation

Choose format for download:

Download Citation
  • Letter
  • Open Access

Detection of low-energy electrons with transition-edge sensors

Carlo Pepe1,2, Benedetta Corcione3,4, Francesco Pandolfi4,*, Hobey Garrone1,2, Eugenio Monticone1, Ilaria Rago4, Gianluca Cavoto3,4, Alice Apponi5, Alessandro Ruocco5 et al.

Federico Malnati6, Danilo Serazio1, and Mauro Rajteri1

  • *Contact author: francesco.pandolfi@roma1.infn.it
PDF

Phys. Rev. Applied 22, L041007 – Published 29 October, 2024

DOI: https://doi.org/10.1103/PhysRevApplied.22.L041007

Abstract

We present the detection of electrons with kinetic energy in the 100 eV range with transition-edge sensors (TESs). This has been achieved with a (100×100)-μm2 Ti/Au bilayer TES, with a critical temperature of about 84 mK. The electrons are produced directly in the cryostat by an innovative cold source based on field emission from vertically aligned multiwall carbon nanotubes. We obtain a Gaussian energy resolution between 0.8 and 1.8 eV for fully absorbed electrons in the (90–101)eV energy range, which is found to be compatible with the resolution of this same device for photons in the same energy range. This work opens possibilities for high-precision energy measurements of low-energy electrons.

View figure in article

Physics Subject Headings (PhySH)

Article Text

References (30)

  1. K. Irwin, An application of electrothermal feedback for high resolution cryogenic particle detection, Appl. Phys. Lett. 66, 1998 (1995).
  2. M. Cunningham, J. Ullom, T. Miyazaki, S. Labov, J. Clarke, T. Lanting, A. T. Lee, P. Richards, J. Yoon, and H. Spieler, High-resolution operation of frequency-multiplexed transition-edge photon sensors, Appl. Phys. Lett. 81, 159 (2002).
  3. K. Hattori, T. Konno, Y. Miura, S. Takasu, and D. Fukuda, An optical transition-edge sensor with high energy resolution, Supercond. Sci. Technol. 35, 095002 (2022).
  4. L. Lolli, E. Taralli, C. Portesi, E. Monticone, and M. Rajteri, High intrinsic energy resolution photon number resolving detectors, Appl. Phys. Lett. 103, 041107 (2013).
  5. K. M. Patel, S. Withington, A. G. Shard, D. J. Goldie, and C. N. Thomas, Electron spectroscopy using transition-edge sensors, J. Appl. Phys. 135, 224504 (2024).
  6. A. Apponi, F. Pandolfi, I. Rago, G. Cavoto, C. Mariani, and A. Ruocco, Absolute efficiency of a two-stage microchannel plate for electrons in the 30–900 eV energy range, Meas. Sci. Technol. 33, 025102 (2022).
  7. A. Apponi, G. Cavoto, M. Iannone, C. Mariani, F. Pandolfi, D. Paoloni, I. Rago, and A. Ruocco, Response of windowless silicon avalanche photo-diodes to electrons in the 90–900 eV range, JINST 15, P11015 (2020).
  8. M. Gugiatti, M. Biassoni, M. Carminati, O. Cremonesi, C. Fiorini, P. King, P. Lechner, S. Mertens, L. Pagnanini, M. Pavan, and S. Pozzi, Characterisation of a silicon drift detector for high-resolution electron spectroscopy, Nucl. Instrum. Methods Phys. Res. A: Accel. Spectrom. Detect. Assoc. Equip. 979, 164474 (2020).
  9. M. Loidl, J. Beyer, L. Bockhorn, C. Enss, S. Kempf, K. Kossert, R. Mariam, O. Nähle, M. Paulsen, P. Ranitzsch, et al., Beta spectrometry with metallic magnetic calorimeters in the framework of the European EMPIR project MetroBeta, Appl. Radiat. Isot. 153, 108830 (2019).
  10. R. P. Fitzgerald, B. K. Alpert, D. T. Becker, D. E. Bergeron, R. M. Essex, K. Morgan, S. Nour, G. O’Neil, D. R. Schmidt, G. A. Shaw, et al., Toward a new primary standardization of radionuclide massic activity using microcalorimetry and quantitative milligram-scale samples, J. Res. Natl. Inst. Stand. Technol. 126, 126048 (2021).
  11. M. G. Betti, et al., PTOLEMY Collaboration, A design for an electromagnetic filter for precision energy measurements at the tritium endpoint, Prog. Part. Nucl. Phys. 106, 120 (2019).
  12. M. G. Betti, et al., PTOLEMY Collaboration, Neutrino physics with the PTOLEMY project: active neutrino properties and the light sterile case, J. Cosmol. Astropart. Phys. 2019, 047 (2019).
  13. A. Apponi, et al., PTOLEMY Collaboration, Implementation and optimization of the PTOLEMY transverse drift electromagnetic filter, J. Instrum. 17, P05021 (2022).
  14. C. Pepe, Superconducting transition-edge sensors in tomorrow physics, Nuovo Cimento C 46, 75 (2023).
  15. E. Monticone, M. Castellino, R. Rocci, and M. Rajteri, Ti/Au ultrathin films for TES application, IEEE Trans. Appl. Supercond. 31, 1 (2021).
  16. L. Manenti, C. Pepe, I. Sarnoff, T. Ibrayev, P. Oikonomou, A. Knyazev, E. Monticone, H. Garrone, F. Alder, O. Fawwaz, A. J. Millar, K. D. Morå, H. Shams, F. Arneodo, and M. Rajteri, Dark counts in optical superconducting transition-edge sensors for rare-event searches, Phys. Rev. Appl. 22, 024051 (2024).
  17. E. Monticone, A. M. Rossi, M. Rajteri, R. S. Gonnelli, V. Lacquaniti, and G. Amato, Structural and morphological properties of evaporated SiOx films, Philos. Mag. B 80, 523 (2000).
  18. E. Schifano, G. Cavoto, F. Pandolfi, G. Pettinari, A. Apponi, A. Ruocco, D. Uccelletti, and I. Rago, Plasma-etched vertically aligned CNTs with enhanced antibacterial power, Nanomaterials 13, 1081 (2023).
  19. R. P. Yadav, I. Rago, F. Pandolfi, C. Mariani, A. Ruocco, S. Tayyab, A. Apponi, and G. Cavoto, Evaluation of vertical alignment in carbon nanotubes: A quantitative approach, Nucl. Instrum. Methods Phys. Res. A: Accel. Spectrom. Detect. Assoc. Equip. 1060, 169081 (2024).
  20. F. Sarasini, J. Tirillò, M. Lilli, M. P. Bracciale, P. E. Vullum, F. Berto, G. De Bellis, A. Tamburrano, G. Cavoto, F. Pandolfi, and I. Rago, Highly aligned growth of carbon nanotube forests with in-situ catalyst generation: A route to multifunctional basalt fibres, Compos. B: Eng. 243, 110136 (2022).
  21. S. Tayyab, A. Apponi, M. G. Betti, E. Blundo, G. Cavoto, R. Frisenda, N. Jiménez-Arévalo, C. Mariani, F. Pandolfi, A. Polimeni, et al., Spectromicroscopy study of induced defects in ion-bombarded highly aligned carbon nanotubes, Nanomaterials 14, 77 (2024).
  22. W. A. de Heer, A. Châtelain, and D. Ugarte, A carbon nanotube field-emission electron source, Science 270, 1179 (1995).
  23. I. Lahiri and W. Choi, Interface control: A modified rooting technique for enhancing field emission from multiwall carbon nanotube based bulk emitters, Acta Mater. 59, 5411 (2011).
  24. V. Semet, V. T. Binh, P. Vincent, D. Guillot, K. Teo, M. Chhowalla, G. Amaratunga, W. Milne, P. Legagneux, and D. Pribat, Field electron emission from individual carbon nanotubes of a vertically aligned array, Appl. Phys. Lett. 81, 343 (2002).
  25. P.-H. Lin, C.-L. Sie, C.-A. Chen, H.-C. Chang, Y.-T. Shih, H.-Y. Chang, W.-J. Su, and K.-Y. Lee, Field emission characteristics of the structure of vertically aligned carbon nanotube bundles, Nanoscale Res. Lett. 10, 1 (2015).
  26. M. Araidai, Y. Nakamura, and K. Watanabe, Field emission mechanisms of graphitic nanostructures, Phys. Rev. B 70, 245410 (2004).
  27. R. Gomer, Field emission, field ionization, and field desorption, Surf. Sci. 299-300, 129 (1994).
  28. D. Drung, C. Abmann, J. Beyer, A. Kirste, M. Peters, F. Ruede, and T. Schurig, Highly sensitive and easy-to-use SQUID sensors, IEEE Trans. Appl. Supercond. 17, 699 (2007).
  29. R. H. Fowler and L. Nordheim, Electron emission in intense electric fields, Proc. R. Soc. Lond. Ser. A-Contain. Pap. Math. Phys. Character 119, 173 (1928).
  30. K. D. Irwin and G. C. Hilton, in Cryogenic particle detection (Springer, Berlin, Germany, 2005), p. 63.

Outline

Information

Phys. Rev. Applied 22, L041007– Published 29 October, 2024
  • Received 30 May 2024
  • Revised 25 July 2024
  • Accepted 4 October 2024
Crossmark - Check for updates button
Creative Commons Logo

Published by the American Physical Society under the terms of the Creative Commons Attribution 4.0 International license. Further distribution of this work must maintain attribution to the author(s) and the published article's title, journal citation, and DOI.

Published by the American Physical Society

Sign In to Your Journals Account

Filter

Filter

Article Lookup

Enter a citation