A new way to make X-rays
The most widely used technology for producing X-rays – used in everything from medical and dental imaging, to testing for cracks in industrial materials – has remained essentially the same for more than a century. But based on a new analysis by researchers at MIT, that might potentially change in the next few years. The finding, based on a new theory backed by exact simulations, shows that a sheet of graphene – a two-dimensional form of pure carbon – could be used to generate surface waves called plasmons when the sheet is struck by photons from a laser beam. These plasmons in turn could be triggered to generate a sharp pulse of radiation, tuned to wavelengths anywhere from infrared light to X-rays. What’s more, the radiation produced by the system would be of a uniform wavelength and tightly aligned, similar to that from a laser beam. The team says this could potentially...