Development of a Prototype Carbon Nanomaterial Advanced Xray Source

X射线源无处不在。早在世纪前，它们就已经出现在机场行李扫描仪和医院病房中;它们在电子验证设备中很常见，并且对于食品和制药行业的异物检测系统至关重要。然而，大多数系统采用在高温下工作的电子源，效率低，不能快速推动。相比之下，场致发射源是高效的，在室温下操作并且几乎即时响应。然而，尽管有许多技术优势，但由于固有的基本材料限制，场发射源尚未被广泛采用。纳米材料是一种新兴的材料，其宽度小于人类头发的千分之一，能够抵抗这种侵蚀性的条件。在剑桥X射线系统的可行性研究中，将开发一种逐原子生长的纳米工程原型X射线源。

Xray sources are ubiquitous. Conceived more than a century ago, they are found in airport luggage scanners and hospital wards; they are common place in electronics validation equipment, and are essential to foreign body detection systems in the food and pharmaceuticals industries. Most systems, however, employ thermionic sources that operate at high temperatures, are inefficient, cannot be pusled rapidly. In contrast, field emission sources are efficient, operate at room temperature and respond almost instantaneously in time. Nevertheless, despite many technological advantages, field emission sources have yet to be widely adopted due to inherent fundamental material limitations. Nanomaterials, an emerging class of materials measuring less than one thousandth the width of a human hair, are capable of resisting such aggressive conditions. In the Cambridge Xray Systems feasibility study a nanoengineered prototype Xray source, grown atom-by-atom, will be developed.