There are several manufacturing techniques for developing thermionic cathodes for vacuum ultraviolet(VUV) ionizers. The triple alkaline earth metal emitters(Ca-Sr-Ba) are formulated as efficient and reliable thermo-electron sources with a great many different compositions for the ionizing devices. We prepare two basic suspensions with different compositions: calcium, strontium and barium. After evaluating the electron-emitting performance for europium, gadolinium, and yttrium-based cathodes mixed with these suspensions, we selected the yttrium for its better performance. Next, another transition metal indium and a lanthanide metal neodymium salt is introduced to two base emitters. These final composite metal emitters are coated on the tungsten filament and then activated to the oxide cathodes by an intentionally programmed calcination process under an ultra-high vacuum(~10-6 torr). The performance of electron emission of the cathodes is characterized by their anode currents with respect to the addition of each element, In and Nd, and their concentration of cathodes. Compared to both the base cathodes, the electron emission performance of the cathodes containing indium and neodymium decreases. The anode current of the Nd cathode is more markedly degraded than that with In.

Spray pyrolysis was applied to prepare (M=Ca, Sr, Ba) blue phosphor powder. The library of a Ca-Sr-Ba ternary system was obtained by a combinatorial method combined with the spray pyrolysis in order to optimize the luminescent property under vacuum ultraviolet (VUV) excitation. 10 potential compositions were chosen from the first screening. The emission shifted to longer wavelength as Ca became a dominant element and the emission intensity was greatly reduced in the composition region at which Ba is dominant element. On the base of the first screening result, the second fine tuning was carried out in order to optimize the luminescence intensity under VUV excitation. The optimal composition for the highest luminescence intensity was which had the color coordinate of (0.152, 0.072) and about 64% emission intensity of (BAM) phosphor.