Thermal desorption of dysprosium from tungsten microcrystal

Activation energy for thermal desorption of dysprosium from a tungsten microcrystal of about 300 nm diameter was determined by means of the field-emission method. The desorption was detected from the whole W emitter surface in the temperature range 1490-1665 K for dysprosium average coverage θ < 0.06 monolayer. The average activation energy was determined to be 4.09 ± 0.06 eV/atom and the frequency factor to be about 1011 s−1. The energy may mainly concern the desorption from the atomically rough regions of the microcrystal.