Ion bombardment is one of the important factors limiting the performance of impregnated cathodes (=Ba dispenser cathodes) in high end television tubes or in colour monitor tubes. Hence, when designing a new gun with, e.g. higher electron beam current density, it is important also to model the influence of ion bombardment. Therefore, relations between basic parameters as a function of temperature need to be known quantitatively. In this paper, the emission slump of impregnated cathodes has been analyzed in a diode configuration in UHV with a differentially pumped Ar ion gun. The emission degeneration during and regeneration periods after ion bombardment have been investigated as function of cathode temperature, ion current and ion energy. One of the important results is, that the degeneration time coefficient is only weakly dependent on ion energy. The data matrix obtained can be used to improve the ion bombardment model applied in new electron gun design. (C) 2003 Elsevier Science B.V. All rights reserved.