Traveling-wave tube efficiency improvement with textured pyrolytic graphite multistage depressed collector electrodes

The improved efficiency of a multistage depressed collector (MDC) with ion-beam textured pyrolytic graphite electrode surfaces is demonstrated by comparison with the performance of other MDC's tested with the same microwave rf amplifier traveling-wave tube (TWT). Because of the sensitivity of overall TWT efficiency to collector efficiency, significant improvements in TWT performance are possible with the use of textured pyrolytic graphite MDC's.