Development of a compact high-current repetitive pulsed x-ray system

Pulsed x-rays are crucial for various applications such as radiography, biological effects, and the system-generated electromagnetic pulse effect. X rays with a higher dose rate and a higher total dose can generate more significant radiation effects and more effective radiography. However, most pulsed sub-100 keV x-ray systems with high dose rates operate in the single pulse mode with limited total dose, and most repetitive pulsed x-ray systems have a low dose rate. This paper develops a compact high-current repetitive pulsed x-ray system with a low-impedance diode to generate high dose rate pulsed x-rays with an average energy below 100 keV. A diode with a double-ring cathode is designed and tested to produce uniform pulsed x-rays. In order to investigate the x-ray intensity and the pulse number of repetitions for different anode thicknesses, five typical thicknesses are tested. The experimental results show that this system can operate stably at a repetitive rate of 0.2 Hz with a peak voltage of about 200 kV and a peak current of about 100 kA. The dose rate is about 2.4 × 105 Gy(LiF)/s, and the average x-ray energy is about 55 keV with the 40 µm thick tantalum anode. The x-ray uniformity is better than 2:1 over the measuring plane.