Speaker
Description
Development of advanced intense and reliable sources of charged particle beams is a direction within accelerator physics on its own right. By changing the temperature of Lithium Tantalate (LiTaO3) single crystal at moderate vacuum conditions leads to generation of strong electric field. The uncompensated polarization during the heating or cooling of the crystal causes the ejection of electrons from either the dielectric layer on the surface of the crystal or from a metal target depending on the polarity. The electrons are accelerated and gain energy of up to a 100 keV. The energy of these electrons can be determined by measuring the end-point energy of the X-ray spectrum that resulted from the electron interactions with the target. The conception of a pyroelectric accelerator enabled us to develop compact (portable) electron source, which does not require an external high-voltage and the use of hazardous materials.
By using the advantage in X-ray energy afforded by the lithium tantalate crystal, it was shown that the k-shell X-rays brass target was fluoresced. Using the same setup an unknown material was inserted to fluoresce using pyroelectric accelerator to analyze its element content. In this report we demonstrate how pyroelectric accelerators can be applied and complement the conventional sources such as X-ray tubes and radioisotopes or even large central facilities.
