This thesis describes the development and characterization of a compact high-brightness liquid-metal-jet anode x-ray source. Initial calculations show that a source based on this concept could potentially lead to a >100-fold increase of the brightness compared to current state-of-the-art rotating-anode x-ray sources. This improvement is due to an increased thermal load capacity of the anode. A low-power proof-of-principle source has been built, and experiments show that the liquid-metal-jet anode can be operated at more than an order of magnitude higher power densities than modern solid-metal anodes. This brightness enhancement has been utilized to acquire in-line phase-contrast images of weakly absorbing objects with substantially shorter exposure times than previously reported. To be able to target different application areas different liquid-jet-anode materials have been tested. The Sn-jet anode could potentially be used in mammography examinations, whereas the Ga-jet could be utilized for, e.g., protein-structure determination with x-ray diffraction. Scaling to higher power and brightness levels is discussed and seems conceivable. A potential obstacle for further development of this source concept, the generation of a microscopic high-speed liquid-metal jet in vacuum, is investigated and is proven to be feasible. Dynamic-similarity experiments using water jets to simulate 30-μm, ~500-m/s tin and gallium jets show good coherence and directional stability of the jet. Other potential difficulties in the further source development, such as excessive debris emission and instabilities of the x-ray emission spot, are also investigated in some detail. / QC 20100915
| Identifer | oai:union.ndltd.org:UPSALLA1/oai:DiVA.org:kth-4005 |
| Date | January 2006 |
| Creators | Otendal, Mikael |
| Publisher | KTH, Biomedicinsk fysik och röntgenfysik, Stockholm : KTH |
| Source Sets | DiVA Archive at Upsalla University |
| Language | English |
| Detected Language | English |
| Type | Doctoral thesis, comprehensive summary, info:eu-repo/semantics/doctoralThesis, text |
| Format | application/pdf |
| Rights | info:eu-repo/semantics/openAccess |
| Relation | Trita-FYS, 0280-316X ; 2006:36 |
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