Reproducible, rugged, and inexpensive photocathode x-ray diode
- Los Alamos National Laboratory, Los Alamos, New Mexico 87545 (United States)
- NSTec, Las Vegas, Nevada 89193 (United States)
- SFA, Inc. Brookhaven National Laboratory, Upton, New York 11973 (United States)
The photoemissive cathode type of x-ray diode (XRD) is popular for measuring time and spectrally resolved output of pulsed power experiments. Vitreous carbon XRDs currently used on the Sandia National Laboratories Z-machine were designed in the early 1980s and use materials and processes no longer available. Additionally cathodes used in the high x-ray flux and dirty vacuum environment of a machine such as Z suffer from response changes requiring recalibration. In searching for a suitable replacement cathode, we discovered very high purity vitreous-carbon planchets are commercially available for use as biological substrates in scanning electron microscope (SEM) work. After simplifying the photocathode mounting to use commercially available components, we constructed a set of 20 XRDs using SEM planchets that were then calibrated at the National Synchrotron Light Source at Brookhaven National Laboratory. We present comparisons of the reproducibility and absolute calibrations between the current vitreous-carbon XRDs and our new design.
- OSTI ID:
- 21266583
- Journal Information:
- Review of Scientific Instruments, Vol. 79, Issue 10; Conference: HTPD08: 17. topical conference on high-temperature plasma diagnostics, Albuquerque, NM (United States), 11-15 May 2008; Other Information: DOI: 10.1063/1.2969279; (c) 2008 American Institute of Physics; Country of input: International Atomic Energy Agency (IAEA); ISSN 0034-6748
- Country of Publication:
- United States
- Language:
- English
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