Recent advances in radiographic X-ray source development at Sandia

Recent experiments at Sandia National Laboratories have demonstrated electron beam diode X-ray sources capable of producing > 350 rad@m with 1.7mm FWHM x-ray source distributions, and endpoint energy spectrum in the 6–7 MeV range. A review of our present theoretical understanding of the diode(s) operation and our experimental and simulation methods to investigate them will be presented. Emphasis is given to e-beam sources used on state-of-the-art Induction Voltage Adder (IVA) pulsed-power accelerators. In addition, a brief discussion of a proposed radiographic system based on Linear Transformer Driver (LTD) technology is discussed.