On the secondary electron emission phenomenon when originating from very thin layers

The secondary electron emission phenomenon lays down the principle of operation of many physical devices and processes. Although it is fairly well described in the case of irradiation of metals there is still lack of information on the secondary electron emission when originating from dielectrics. In this work we report on the secondary electron emission resulting from very thin layers. It is found that for dielectric SiO
₂
layers of less than 100 nm of thickness a departure from the general behaviour occurs for incident primary electrons with energy of around 1 keV. The departure in the electron emission yield heavily depends on the layer thickness. The case of nanostructured layers - dielectric matrices containing metal nanoparticles is also considered in the study.