Double cylindrical open counter of pocket size

A small size, portable double cylindrical open counter, capable of counting electrons at much lower anode voltage than the commercial open counters, was designed and developed. As the electric field around the anode in the counter had cylindrical symmetry, the dead time was easily estimated theoretically from the geometry of the counter, showing a very good agreement with that determined experimentally. The work functions of a polycrystalline gold plate, and p-GaAs(001) and n-Si(111) wafers were measured by the double cylindrical open counter, giving practically the same values as those obtained by the AC-1 open counter commercially available.