Investigation of the durability of a pyroelectric neutron source and secondary electron suppression
Abstract.The performance of a pyroelectric neutron source depends on several factors, such as the achieved high voltage, deuterium gas pressure and the tip geometry. Here we present measurements to investigate the dependency of the neutron production on the high voltage specifically and discuss the interdependency with other factors. In addition we present results showing that a biased grid in front of the target, which is a common way to capture secondary electrons, does not have any significant effect on the amount of electrons streaming back to the pyroelectric crystal. This indicates that the bulk of these electrons does not originate from the target but from a different source.