Secondary-Electron Emission from Glycerol-Coated Copper Surfaces

Abstract
This paper reports the results of an experimental determination of the secondary-emission characteristics of glycerol layers on copper surfaces. This work has as its motivation the use of glycerol as a working fluid in electric thrustors for spacecraft. Secondary-emission coefficients for glycerol are reported as a function of incident primary-electron energy. Primary-electron energy was varied from 200–900 eV and glycerol secondary-emission coefficients were found to vary from 2.5 to about 1.0. These results are compared with values for clean copper surfaces found by using the same apparatus.