X Rays to Go: Carbon nanotubes could shrink machines
Carbon nanotubes have been the darlings of the technology community for a decade. Researchers around the world have been touting them as promising components for making products ranging from microchips to medicines. Now, these tiny tubes have found their way into a novel X-ray machine that could improve examinations of patients in the hospital, victims at the scene of an automobile crash, or luggage at airport-security checkpoints.
Unlike conventional machines, the new one doesn’t require high temperatures to generate high-energy electrons for producing X rays. A thin layer of carbon nanotubes operating at room temperature does the job, says developer Otto Zhou of the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill.