A research team from the Japanese University of Nagoya has succeeded in developing a super -delicious mirror, which is able to enlarge X -rays more than 3400 times without the need to paste multiple ingredients, which opens new horizons in the areas of X -ray analysis and high -precision imaging.
This achievement -which was recently published in study The “Scinevik Reports” journal- highlights a rare material known as “nebasa lithium”, which researchers used smartly to make a mono-mirror that can change its shape with nanometer and an unprecedented curvature.
“This technology represents an essential step towards expanding the capabilities of X -ray analysis and imaging, and is a vital component of more advanced future visual systems in multiple areas.” Explains Takato Enwoy, a researcher at the Department of Materials Physics at the College of Graduate Studies of Engineering at the Japanese University of Nagoya and the main author of the study. This achievement in exclusive statements to Al -Jazeera Net.
Lithium nebata key solution
“The problem with traditional deformation mirrors is that it was limited in terms of the extent of deformation that can be achieved, due to the necessity of pasteing multiple materials together, making it impossible to reduce the thickness of the mirror as a whole.”
Distinated mirrors are flexible mirrors that can be changed the shape of their surface (curvature or orientation) actively using very small mechanical operators, such as accurate electrical engines or materials with covered modal properties, and are often used in visual systems where you need to compensate for distortions or deviations that light is exposed to.
Discrimpable mirrors are used in areas such as astronomy and medicine to photograph the retina, but their merging into X -ray systems was limited, because their ability to bend is weak in this context, and when making it multiple layers are glued together to increase their strength, but this makes them thicker and weakening weak in front of harsh environments such as high temperatures and low pressure.
Enwawi says that the reason for researchers resorting to the very thin and thin -thin structure of the mirror is that “the amount of deformation is inversely proportional to the mirror thick box, so we sought to manufacture a mono -brown mirror.”
Enwawi explains that the more the mirror’s thickness decreases, the researchers, the researchers, will control the visual characteristics to determine how to pass or reflect light and how it focuses, and control the width of the beam and the location of the image depending on that relationship.
Here comes the role of the primary innovation in the study, which is based on the use of nebasa lithium, which is a compressor substance, that is, a substance whose shape changes when electricity is passed or produced electricity when pressed.
It also has unique polar properties, meaning that the material contains positive and negative electrical charges in particular, and the direction of arranging these charges can be reflected by heating or exposing them to an electric voltage.
“The lithium nebasa is a unique substance with its properties, unlike polarization, when heated it to about a thousand degrees Celsius, the direction of polarization is turned by half of the substrate, and by using this feature we were able to make a deformed mirror without using the paste,” Einoi says.
Amazing technical creativity
To understand what is happening, imagine that we have a piece of crystal (or the substrate) of the lithium nibat, for example, one centimeter, inside that crystal there is a specific arrangement for electrical charges, part of which is positive and the other negative, and these shipments are arranged in a specific direction, such as a number of arrows all indicate the top or down.
Now, if we heat up to a temperature of about a thousand degrees Celsius, something strange occurs, as the upper half of the crystal maintains the direction of its shipments as it is, while the lower half shipments turn as if the arrows have become indicating the opposite direction.
This emerging structure is known as the “Bimorf” structure, that is, a bilateral structure inside the same crystal, and in the traditional devices they affixed two pieces of different compressive materials together to form this structure, one shrinking and the other expands and bends the shape.
But in this discovery, they used one full crystal of lithium nebata, and they succeeded in contrast to the polarization of its lower half, so the same crystal became acting as if it was made up of two opposite parts and without any adhesive.
The importance of innovation is not limited to design, but his performance has been practically demonstrated in a facility known as “Spring-8”, which is one of the largest X-ray sources in the world.
The team was able to change the size of the X -ray package using the new mirror of only 200 nm to 683 micrometers, i.e. 3400 times, a domain that was not previously possible using traditional mirrors.
“The field of vision and spatial accuracy of the analysis of X -ray can only be modified, but the analysis method can also be changed,” Einoy says.
Imagine that you have a microscope that can in a certain position to photograph a very small part of a very high -resolution cell, and in another position it can wipe a wide space to see the general distribution of certain materials.
Each position is used for a different analysis method, one for the analysis of the micro -structure (200 nm) and another for the general distribution analysis of the element (683 micrometers), with this changing mirror the scientists can switch between these two types of analysis easily without changing the microscope.
Towards a new era of adaptive optics
Using an X -ray overlap scale, researchers achieve the accuracy of the distorted mirror shape, as the error in the final form reached only 3 nanometers, which is accurate approaching the theoretical limits of the best optics systems in the world.
Despite the initial success, there are still technical challenges that need solutions, one of which is the difficulty of manufacturing and installing high -tender mirrors, whose thickness reaches parts of the millimeter.
“We believe that this can be solved by using high -resolution manufacturing technology,” Enowi admits, adding that “the next step is to thin the mirror into the thickness of dozens of micrometers, and the development of an accurate control tool to move it.”
By eliminating the need for pasting and adopting unilateral design, the Nagoya University team opened new horizons towards designing more elastic and accurate visual systems, with the ability to work in circumstances that were not possible before.
At a time when humanity seeks to understand the most accurate structures in matter, biology and technology, Nagoya mirror can be the eye of the new science towards the nanic world.