Development of a compact high-current repetitive pulsed x-ray system

Ze-Qi Lyu; Yan-Zhao Xie; Yi Zhou; Yin-Hui Cheng; Ming Jiang

doi:10.1063/5.0159227

Development of a compact high-current repetitive pulsed x-ray system

Rev Sci Instrum. 2023 Oct 1;94(10):103311. doi: 10.1063/5.0159227.

Authors

Ze-Qi Lyu¹, Yan-Zhao Xie¹, Yi Zhou¹, Yin-Hui Cheng¹, Ming Jiang²

Affiliations

¹ State Key Laboratory of Electrical Insulation and Power Equipment, School of Electrical Engineering, Xi'an Jiaotong University, 710049 Xi'an, Shaanxi, China.
² Key Laboratory of Physical Electronics and Devices of the Ministry of Education, Faculty of Electronic and Information Engineering, Xi'an Jiaotong University, 710049 Xi'an, Shaanxi, China.

PMID: 37882669
DOI: 10.1063/5.0159227

Abstract

Pulsed x-rays are crucial for various applications such as radiography, biological effects, and the system-generated electromagnetic pulse effect. X rays with a higher dose rate and a higher total dose can generate more significant radiation effects and more effective radiography. However, most pulsed sub-100 keV x-ray systems with high dose rates operate in the single pulse mode with limited total dose, and most repetitive pulsed x-ray systems have a low dose rate. This paper develops a compact high-current repetitive pulsed x-ray system with a low-impedance diode to generate high dose rate pulsed x-rays with an average energy below 100 keV. A diode with a double-ring cathode is designed and tested to produce uniform pulsed x-rays. In order to investigate the x-ray intensity and the pulse number of repetitions for different anode thicknesses, five typical thicknesses are tested. The experimental results show that this system can operate stably at a repetitive rate of 0.2 Hz with a peak voltage of about 200 kV and a peak current of about 100 kA. The dose rate is about 2.4 × 105 Gy(LiF)/s, and the average x-ray energy is about 55 keV with the 40 µm thick tantalum anode. The x-ray uniformity is better than 2:1 over the measuring plane.