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Updated: Feb 27, 2026
A Method to Manipulate Surface Tension of a Liquid Metal via Surface Oxidation and Reduction
Published on: January 26, 2016
Note: Fabrication of roughened tips for liquid metal ion sources
Dengshuai Guo1, Xiaoming Kang1, Jing Hu1
1State Key Laboratory of Mechanical System and Vibration, School of Mechanical Engineering, Shanghai Jiao Tong University, Shanghai 200240, China.
Abstract:
In a liquid metal ion source (LMIS), the radius and the surface texture of the LMIS needle tip are demonstrated to have great effect on the I-V characteristics and the threshold voltages. In this paper, the dependence of the AC electrochemical etching parameters on the radius and the surface texture of the needle tip is investigated experimentally. A new method for fabricating the needle tip with the designed radius and texture for the LMIS is proposed. In this method, the roughening of a needle tip consists of two processes: a short time high AC voltage etching process and a long time low AC voltage etching process. The performances of the presented method are validated by a number of experiments.
