Laser energies of several joules per pulse are obtained in XeCl lasers with X-ray preionized discharge. High average power are accessible with this technique at high repetition rate, but reliability problems occur, especially for the electron gun of the X-ray source. In this work, a secondary mission electron gun is used for the X-ray source. This gun has a potential of more than 108 pulses at a pulse repetition frequency of 1 kHz. The maximum energy is 1.2 j/pulse from a 40 x 4.2 x 2.3 cm3 discharge. The minimum X-ray dose is shown to be nearly 40 mrad/pulse, i.e. more than one order of magnitude larger than in a similar smaller system.

Date Published: 26 April 1989
PDF: 6 pages
Proc. SPIE 1023, Excimer Lasers and Applications, (26 April 1989); doi: 10.1117/12.950133

Published in SPIE Proceedings Vol. 1023:
Excimer Lasers and Applications
Dirk Basting, Editor(s)