Method holds promise to make bioimaging X-ray machines smaller and more flexible

Researchers from Nanyang Technological University, Singapore (NTU Singapore) have found a new way to produce X-rays with wavelengths in what is called the “water window”. The researchers believe the method holds promise to make bioimaging X-ray machines smaller and more flexible.

Water-window X-rays are useful for bioimaging because they visualise biological cells at high contrast without staining them or requiring potentially damaging preparation; however, some tabletop machines only produce radiation in a fixed range of energies, so more machines are needed if X-rays of varying energies are required to improve image contrast.

Even then, the researchers say, they cannot cover the full spectrum of energies in the water window. There are single machines that can flexibly produce X-rays of different energies, but these are expensive synchrotrons larger than a house and difficult for most researchers to access.

Associate Professor Wong Liang Jie from NTU Singapore’s School of Electrical and Electronic Engineering led a team of scientists to address these difficulties by showing that water-window X-rays of varying energies can be produced using thin flakes of graphite 10–170 nm thick in a table-sized set-up.

The energy of the X-rays can be precisely adjusted by changing the energy of an electron beam fired at the graphite to generate the radiation, the team also showed, as well as by tweaking the angle at which the graphite is tilted.

To achieve this, the team developed a framework that precisely accounts for the scattering of electrons fired at crystalline materials. The researchers also predicted and experimentally confirmed fundamental scaling laws governing the production of X-rays from shooting electrons at crystals.

Details of the study were published in Nature Photonics (doi.org/10.1038/s41566-024-01547-3).

Image: Graphite on a sample holder being loaded into a field emission scanning electron microscope for the NTU team’s X-ray experiments. Credit: NTU Singapore.