Insulator surface analysis

Charging an insulator hampers surface analysis techniques from working properly and over a long time has been considered as a spurious effect. Actually it is a physical phenomenon of major importance because its parameters are also those used to describe the macroscopic properties of insulators. This paper explains trapping/detrapping mechanisms where the important points are the calculation of the trap energy and of the energy stored in a charged dielectric material. Experimental techniques are developed for determining the insulator intrinsic properties. It is shown that measurements of permitivity, detrapping activation energy, trapping rate, detrapping space charge field, and power coefficient in the law describing the relationship between the insulator size and the detrapping field, are obtained with an electron beam. Another important finding is that charging significantly modifies the free energy of the sample. The consequence of the dielectric relaxation is investigated. It has been found that electron beam damages is not related to stimulated desorption but to the release of the polarization energy. This new approach to charging and related phenomena is applied to material science. It is shown that many phenomena such as breakdown, friction, fracture, which were believed to be very different are actually all related to dielectric processes. One consequence of the dielectric relaxation is the exoemission of various particles including neutrons in appropriate materials. The enormous energy released during charge detrapping or during polarization switching in ferroelectrics has been used elsewhere to produce electron and ion sources and nuclear fusion.