Experimental Investigation of W-band Pierce Electron gun for LIGA-fabricated Millimeter-wave Vacuum Electron Devices

We report a thermionic Pierce electron gun, which has been designed, developed and experimentally tested for getting desired performance for W-band LIGA fabricated devices like folded waveguide backward-wave oscillator (FWBWO). This gun has used thermionic dispenser cathode of 1.6 mm button diameter with corresponding cathode emission loading around 2.5 A/cm
²
. It is delivering 50 mA beam current at 12 kV beam voltage with 0.36 mm beam waist radius. The current density of beam is estimated at the beam waist position.