These electrons then hit a phosphor screen where they are amplified and converted back into light. As electrons hit the millions of channels, they release thousands of secondary electrons. Microchannel plates are also used in night-vision goggles. Continuous dynode electron multipliers are also used in NASA missions and are coupled to a gas chromatography mass spectrometer ( GC-MS) which allows scientists to determine the amount and types of gasses present on Titan, Saturn's largest moon. They can be the continuous-dynode type and may have a curved horn-like funnel shape or can have discrete dynodes as in a photomultiplier. In mass spectrometry electron multipliers are often used as a detector of ions that have been separated by a mass analyzer of some sort.

MicrochannelplateWithBreakdown Applications Instruments Some advantages of using this include a response time in the picoseconds, a high sensitivity, and an electron gain of about 10 8 electrons. The dynodes are set up so that each time an electron hits the next one it will have an increase of about 100 electron Volts greater than the last dynode.

Secondary electron emission begins when one electron hits a dynode inside a vacuum chamber and ejects electrons that cascade onto more dynodes and repeats the process over again. The electron multiplier can use any number of dynodes in total, which use a coefficient, σ, and created a gain of σ n where n is the number of emitters. In 1930, Russian physicist Leonid Aleksandrovitch Kubetsky proposed a device which used photocathodes combined with dynodes, or secondary electron emitters, in a single tube to remove secondary electrons by increasing the electric potential through the device.

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