Observation of reduction of secondary electron emission from helium ion impact due to plasma-generated nanostructured tungsten fuzz

Growth of nanostructured fuzz on a tungsten target in a helium plasma is found to cause a significant (similar to 3x) reduction in ion impact secondary electron emission in a linear plasma device. The ion impact secondary electron emission is separated from the electron impact secondary electron emission by varying the target bias voltage and fitting to expected contributions from electron impact, both thermal and non-thermal; with the non-thermal electron contribution being modeled using Monte-Carlo simulations. The observed (similar to 3x) reduction is similar in magnitude to the (similar to 2x) reduction observed in previous work for the effect of tungsten fuzz formation on secondary electron emission due to electron impact. It is hypothesized that the observed reduction results from re-absorption of secondary electrons in the tungsten fuzz.