Our CT tube R&D engineer Li Xiaobing as the first author, Liu Menglong and Wu Qingyang as co-authors published an SCI article in the old professional magazine JVST.

In this paper, a fully vacuum-sealed microfocus X-ray tube is proposed, which has the following characteristics. First, a vertically aligned annular carbon nanotube (CNT) field emission cathode is grown by microwave plasma-enhanced chemical vapor deposition. Second, the grid control structure allows the X-ray tube to switch states instantaneously. The total emission current can reach 200μA, the gate voltage is 2.4kV at this time, and the corresponding maximum emission current density of the annular carbon nanotube field emission cathode is 10.1μA/cm2. Moreover, the electron beam convergence is controlled by the optimized focusing electrode, which can generate X-ray microfocus smaller than 5 μm. Therefore, the X-ray tube can generate X-ray images with very high spatial resolution. X-ray fluoroscopic imaging of multilayer printed circuit boards (PCBs) and FPGA chips can clearly distinguish gold wires with a width of about 20 μm.

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