A tiny technology for producing X rays in a novel way could increase the sensitivity of luggage screening at airports, medical imaging, and other techniques for looking through things and make their use more widespread.
In conventional X-ray machines, a metallic filament heated to 1,000° C emits electrons that barrel down a vacuum tube and collide with a piece of metal to produce the rays. The new X-ray device, designed by Otto Zhou of the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill and his colleagues, relies instead on a film of carbon nanotubes that emits electrons at room temperature when exposed to an electric field. It’s a much less energy-consuming process, Zhou says.