Electrical charging of non-conductors in a photoelectron spectrometer; effect of X-ray source voltage

The electrical charging on samples of gadolinium trifluoride, sodium fluoride and fused silica, has been investigated as a function of the voltage in the X-ray source of a photoelectron spectrometer. The results can be expressed in the form,E_c = d + c(V – V₀) + a(1 - e^{?b(V – V₀)}) an equation which expresses the linear dependence of the intensity of the photoelectrons on X-ray intensity and the dependence of the low energy electrons as that corresponding to the equivalent electrical circuit consisting of an emf, a capacitor, and a resistor. With gadolinium trifluoride and sodium fluoride, both of which have a relatively high photoconversion, the electrical potential is positive for all voltages. With fused silica, which has a relatively low photoemission, the electrical potential is negative for the lower voltages. Relative to an assumed value of 83.8 eV for the binding energy for Au(4f_{$\text{7}\text{2}$}) of gold deposited on NaF and GdF₃, the charge corrected values for F(1s) and the Gd(4f_{$\text{sol7}\text{2}$}) orbital binding energies are determined to be 684.57 ± .07 and 10.1 eV, respectively.