Abstract

The liquid-metal-jet technology has developed into fully operational and stable X-ray tubes running in many labs over the world. The fundamental limit for the X-ray power generated from a given spot size is when the electron beam power is so high that it locally melts the anode. The liquid-metal-jet anode (MetalJet) technology solves this thermal limit by replacing the traditional anode by a thin high-speed jet of liquid metal. Melting of the anode is therefore no longer a problem as it is already molten, and significantly (currently about 10x) higher e-beam power densities can therefore by used. High-end x-ray scattering techniques such BIO-SAXS, non-ambient SAXS and GISAXS rely heavily on the x-ray source brightness for resolution and exposure time. Similarly, applications like phase contrast imaging and micro-XRF demand small spot size. We report brightness of 6.5 x 10^10 photons/(s·mm2·mrad2·line) over a spot size of 10 µm FWHM.

The applications for MetalJet X-ray sources include X-ray diffraction and scattering, but recently several publications have also shown very impressive imaging results using liquid-metal-jet anode technology, especially in 2-D or 3-D phase-contrast imaging and X-ray microscopy. MetalJet source also shows its applicability extending to industrial imaging applications.

In addition to the high brightness microfocus MetalJet tube, based on the advanced electron beam technology, a nanofocus x-ray tube, with tungsten-coated diamond-transmission target has reached an extreme resolution of 150 nm line-spacing. The extremely small, true round focal spot of the Nanotube can be used for non-destructive, sub-µm resolution 2-D and 3-D imaging investigation.

This presentation will review the status of the liquid metal-jet and the Nanotube technology specifically in terms of stability, lifetime, flux and optics. It will furthermore refer to some recent user examples for applications like SEC-SAXS, bio-SAXS, XPS, micro-XRF and nano-CT.