New X-ray technology revolution ‘could cut health risks’
X-RAY technology is on the “brink of revolution,” say researchers who have built a prototype detector that cuts health risks while boosting resolution.
The amazing new tech, made of a super-thin sheet of a metallic material called perovskite, are
100 times more sensitive than a conventional X-ray and require just a tiny fraction of the energy needed for a scan.
The scientists who developed it, based at US military research facility Los Alamos National Laboratory, Texas, and Argonne National Laboratory, Illinois, say this means it can make high quality images – to better evaluate patients – and reduces the amount of harmful radiation they are exposed to.
While the technology could be used to “revolutionise” medical and dental X-rays, it could also be used in research and security as well as other jobs researchers haven’t yet imagined.
Dr Hsinhan Tsai, from Los Alamos National Laboratory, said: “The perovskite material at the heart of our detector prototype can be produced with low-cost fabrication techniques.
“The result is a cost-effective, highly sensitive, and self-powered detector that could radically improve existing X-ray detectors, and potentially lead to a host of unforeseen applications.”
Because perovskite is rich in heavy elements, such as lead and iodine, X-rays that easily pass through silicon, used in conventional X-ray detectors, without registering are more readily absorbed, and detected, in perovskite.
As a result, perovskite significantly outperforms silicon, particularly at detecting high-energy X-rays. This is a crucial advantage when it comes to monitoring X-rays at high-energy research facilities like particle accelerators such as the
Large Hadron Collider – famous for experiments to find the so-called “god particle”.
Perovskite films can be laid extremely thinly on surfaces by spraying solutions that cure and leave layers behind – a much cheaper way of making them than high-pressure, high-temperature vacuum techniques to manufacture silicon detectors.
Mr Tsai added: “Potentially, we could use ink-jet types of systems to print large scale detectors.
“This would allow us to replace half-million-dollar silicon detector arrays with inexpensive, higherresolution perovskite alternatives.”