Heaters for Electron Guns

The need for wire that is able to be heated up to high temperatures span a very large and diverse number applications and fields of use from everday consumer applications to advanced military and industrial applications. Some of these applications require heater wire that operate at very high temperatures. There are still a number of military and defense systems that use vacuum tubes/electronics. For example, some of the typical vacuum electronic devices (VEDs) that produce the electron beams. The Navy is using rhenium-tungsten (abbreviated Re-W or W-Re) heater wire in existing vacuum tube technologies to heat the cathodes of the electron guns. Domestic manufacturing sources for this type of heater wire are decreasing causing a continual increase in the costs to both government and industry to manufacture and purchase the wire. Various factors combine to create the diminishing manufacturing base. To address this need for a replacement heater wire/heater assembly for this Navy SBIR program, we propose two approaches for replacing the traditional and conventional method of W-Re heater wire fabrication. These two innovative approaches provide highly efficient precise, cost-effective heater solutions for cathodes for VEDs provide equivalent or enhanced performance at lower cost and are amenable to automated manufacturing.