An Electron Beam Technique for Visualization of Charge Distribution

An Electron-optical apparatus for visualizing the distribution of surface charge on a solid sample is described. By the deflection of electron beam which is scanned near the charge, a characteristic pattern corresponding to the charge distribution is obtained on a screen as a track of the end points of the beam. The tracks are analyzed theoretically from the interaction between electric charges and electron beams. Experiments are performed on various types of charge distributions. It is shown that the theoretical curves agree well with the observed tracks.