Catching Rays

X-rays painlessly zip through flesh and tissue, revealing fractures or cracks in bones in the patterns left on a detector. While they’ve revolutionised modern medicine, X-rays also carry risks – frequent exposure to high 'doses' may cause disease. So radiographers are on the lookout for ways to reduce our exposure to X-rays. Bringing together several novel technologies, here a new 3D printing technique sprays an aerosol mixture of perovskite, a mineral which helps to catch X-rays, into a pattern of pillars studded onto a supporting layer of graphene. The tiny bed of sensitive squares forms a cheap and highly-sensitive X-ray detector, each contributing pixels to a computer image with 1000 times lower doses of X-rays than often used today. This new device also requires less expensive machinery, potentially promising safer medical imaging available across the world.

Written by John Ankers

John Ankers

Writer

A former researcher in systems biology, John is now an online biology tutor and professional coach supporting the wellbeing of scientists and NHS professionals. He's writing, too, of course.

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• Image by L. Forró, Ecole Polytechnique Fédérale de Lausanne (EPFL)
• Laboratory of Physics of Complex Matter (LPMC), EPFL, Lausanne, Switzerland
• Image copyright held by the original authors
• Research published in ACS Nano, February 2021