Active-gas discharge cleaning and low-field electron emission

A method of cleaning surfaces employing the chemical interaction between bombarding ions and surface contaminants is proposed. The cleaning procedure consists of two steps: oxidation, which converts carbon, hydrocarbons, and other nonmetallic species into gases, and reduction, which removes oxides from the surface. The method was used to treat a lead-plated superconducting resonator and, slightly modified, to clean the titanium electrodes of the accelerator tube of the 14-MeV Pelletron electrostatic accelerator.<
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