A THEORETICAL COMPARISON OF THE DATA-ACQUISITION TIME CHARACTERISTICS OF THE TIME OF FLIGHT VOLTAGE CONTRAST DETECTOR WITH RETARDING-FIELD DETECTORS

This paper carries out a theoretical study of the data-acquisition time advantages of the time of flight multichannel voltage contrast detector over conventional retarding field detectors. A theoretical model is developed which can be generalized to apply to other possible multichannel voltage contrast detectors. The results show that where surface field effects are not present or can be eliminated, the data-acquisition times of the time of flight detector can be two orders of magnitude faster than conventional retarding field detectors. Under strong surface field conditions this factor of improvement can fall to below an order of magnitude.