How research in Delft will benefit from this new X-ray source

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Researchers who need X-ray sources currently have two options. Either they can use a cheap and compact X-ray tube, like at the dentist’s, that emits X-rays of various wavelengths in all directions. Or they can enlist at one of about 70 synchrotron facilities worldwide which produce highly directed and carefully tuned X-ray radiation. Soon they’ll have another option with the table-top synchrotron called Smart*Light that will be built at the Eindhoven University of Technology (TU/e).

“Smart*Light will give us the opportunity to analyse the chemical composition of paintings, layer by layer,” said Professor Joris Dik (TU Delft 3mE Faculty) who specialises in the material analysis of artworks. Dik, who is one of the project’s initiators, explains: “Layer-by-layer analysis is important for the conservation of art as well as for verifying its authenticity.”

Professor Jom Luiten (Applied Physics at TU/e) is the other initiator. Luiten explains that many of the researchers now going to one of the large synchrotron facilities don’t really need the fantastic specifications on offer. Hence the idea for a small synchrotron. “The Smart*Light will be a compact and tuneable X-ray source, less than four metres long, that can be used in any laboratory.”

Applications are also expected in medical diagnostics, automotive and shipbuilding

The new X-ray source deploys a technique by which the energy of electrons moving almost at the speed of light is transferred onto photons. This phenomenon is known as inverse Compton scattering and it is called ‘inverse’ because the electrons lose energy to low-energy photons, which is the opposite of the standard Compton effect.

The relativistic electrons are produced in a linear synchrotron several metres long. At the intersection of the tightly focused electron beam with the high-density laser beam, the photon energies are boosted by a million, turning infra-red photons into high energy X-ray photons.

The Smart*Light research project has received a three million euro grant from a European fund for Regional Development, enabling the researchers to start building a prototype at the TU/e. The Universities of Ghent and Antwerp will develop dedicated detection techniques. Applications are expected in the fields of medical diagnostics, automotive, shipbuilding, and art history and conservation. Other members of the consortium are VDL ETG BV, Agfa Healthcare, Erasmus MC, Stichting tot beheer museum Boijmans van Beuningen, TI-COAST, XRE NV, Koninklijk Museum voor Schone Kunsten Antwerpen and Stichting Materials Innovation Institute.

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• Read also: Building ‘scaled down synchrotron’ begun