The world's brightest X-ray source was invented

According to Mehr News Agency, citing Interesting Engineering, this achievement has many applications in important fields such as fusion energy research.

To achieve this, the researchers combined two important tools, the National Combustion Facility (NIF) laser and very light metal foams. The NIF laser is one of the most powerful energy lasers in the world that can provide very powerful light pulses. Metal foams are also materials with a sponge-like structure, which is why they are very light.

The researchers used silver to create the metallic foam because the X-ray energy a metal produces is related to its atomic number. They wrote in their research statement: The team used silver because they wanted to produce X-rays with energy greater than 20,000 electron volts. Researchers also made cylindrical targets with a width of 4 mm using molds and silver nanowires.

When the NIF laser hits a piece of solid metal, it targets a small area on its surface, but the porous nature of the foam causes the laser to penetrate deeper and thus hit a larger volume of material. Lawrence Livermore National Laboratory researcher Jeff Colvin says about this: We invented silver foam with a density of about 1/1000 of solid density, which is not much higher than the density of air. The NIF laser hits a larger volume of material in such a foam and the heat penetrates faster. The entire foam cylinder heated up in about 1.5 billionths of a second.

This rapid and continuous heating process leads to the production of extremely bright X-rays. The researchers conducted further experiments with foams of different densities to find the optimal structure to maximize energy efficiency.

Such an X-ray source has great potential in the field of scientific discoveries. Its high brightness and energy level are especially efficient for imaging and analyzing very dense matter such as plasma produced during inertial confinement fusion experiments.

Inertial confinement fusion is a process that uses powerful lasers to heat and compress a small pellet of fuel and is a clean and abundant source of energy.