Abstract

A vacuum photodiode is the most elementary photoelectric detector. Such a device is sensitive to photon energies which exceed the photocathode work function in accord with the classical photoelectric effect. For vacuum ultraviolet and soft x-ray radiation, photoelectric quantum yields in excess of 50% can be reached.¹ With a carefully designed external circuit, the response time of such a detector is limited by the diode capacitance. The present state-of-the-art rise time in a commercial biplanar vacuum photodiode² is 60 ps.

© 1988 Optical Society of America