Development of a Prototype Carbon Nanomaterial Advanced Xray Source

X射线源无处不在。它们是在一个多世纪前构思出来的，可以在机场行李扫描仪和医院病房中找到；它们是电子验证设备中的常见场所，也是食品和制药行业异物检测系统的关键。然而，大多数系统使用的热电子源在高温下运行，效率低下，不能快速推送。相比之下，场发射源效率高，在室温下工作，并且响应时间几乎是瞬时的。然而，尽管有许多技术上的优势，由于固有的基本材料限制，场发射源还没有被广泛采用。纳米材料是一种新兴的材料，其宽度不到人类头发的千分之一，能够抵抗这种侵略性条件。在剑桥X射线系统可行性研究中，将开发一种纳米工程原型X射线源，一个原子一个原子地生长。

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.