Investigation of the character of erosion of the cathode surface exposed to the vacuum pulse arc discharge

With the use of scanning electron microscopy, the erosion traces on materials with different thermal physical properties (Cu, Sn, Mg, Fe, Zr) with a natural oxide film on their surface were studied. A presence of erosion craters with strong melting of several /spl mu/m and less than /spl mu/m size craters has been established. Crater density and their dimensions decrease from the center of the discharge to its periphery. A characteristic of erosion influence was shown to correlate with the ratio of the temperature of oxide melting (decomposition) to the melting temperature of a base metal.