Secondary electron emission of carbonaceous dust particles

In this paper we present measurements of the secondary electron emission yield (γ) of a carbonaceous dust particle material, which was grown in argon diluted acetylene plasmas. One aim was to reach a better understanding of charging and discharging processes of dust particles in complex plasmas due to secondary electron emission and consequently to try to explain the anomalous behavior of electron density observed in afterglows of pulsed rf plasmas. We compared the results of a simple model and of a Monte Carlo simulation to the previously measured time dependence of the electron density in complex plasma afterglow. It was found that the value of the intrinsic secondary electron yield from the carbonaceous dust material is too low to explain the increase of electron density in the afterglow. It is, however, possible that the electrons charging the particles are weakly attached so that they may be released with high efficiency by ion bombardment due to field induced emission or by other mechanisms