March 2015 Archives

Scientists at Los Alamos National Laboratory have recently reported the X-ray analysis of uranium oxideα-U₃O₈ samples under controlled temperatures and humidities. They found that the combined use of powder X-ray diffraction and U L-III EXAFS can help in identifying temporal changes of uranium oxide stored for a number of years. For more information, see the paper, "Oxidation and Hydration of U₃O₈ Materials Following Controlled Exposure to Temperature and Humidity", A. L. Tamasi et al., Anal. Chem. 87, 4210 (2015).

A very interesting idea that proposes the use of a motor in a hard disk drive as an X-ray chopper has been recently published. It can produce X-ray pulses of ms width and few μs rise time. In the research, the system was used to test the response of X-ray detectors such as ionization chambers and photo diodes. For more information, see the paper, "Hard disk drive based microsecond x-ray chopper for characterization of ionization chambers and photodiodes", O. Muller et al., Rev. Sci. Instrum. 86, 035105 (2015).