Extraction of multiple parameters of a light-activated thermionic cathode with a single type of experiment

A method is proposed to evaluate the internal parameters of a light induced thermionic emission (LITE) device based on a single type of current-voltage (I-V) sweep experiment. An algorithm is developed to calculate the entire (I-V) characteristic of the device in the three operating regimes: the retarding mode, the space-charge limited mode and the saturation mode. In order to obtain the I-V characteristics in the space-charge limited mode, Vlaslov's and Poisson's equations are solved analytically. The experimental results are fitted to the simulation results in order to calculate the internal parameters of the thermionic device.