World's Thinnest X-Ray Detector Makes Real-Time Cell Imaging Easy

Researchers in Australia have tapped into cutting-edge materials science to produce the world's thinnest X-ray detector, the component that translates energy from radiation into visual or electronic forms.

Photo Insert: Various x-rays

The novel device is highly suited to the imaging of wet proteins and living cells, and according to the scientists behind it, has the potential to do so in real time, Nick Lavars reported for New Atlas.

The advance comes courtesy of researchers at Melbourne's ARC Center of Excellence in Exciton Science and makes use of an optoelectronic material called tin mono-sulfide (SnS).

This has shown great potential in other fields, particularly in the development of ultra-thin solar cells, but through a novel fabrication technique, the scientists were able to produce forms of it highly suited to X-ray imaging. The research was published in the journal Advanced Functional Materials.

This technique is described as a metal-based exfoliation method, and it enabled the researchers to fabricate high-quality sheets of SnS with a large surface area and very precisely controlled thickness.

This in turn makes the material highly sensitive to what are known as "soft" X-rays, which unlike the "hard" X-rays used to image broken bones in the hospital, use lower photon energy to examine wet proteins and living cells.

Some such measurements occur in what is known as the "water window," a part of the electromagnetic spectrum where water is transparent to soft X-rays.

However, promising candidate materials for soft X-ray detection such as nanocrystal films and ferromagnetic flakes don't work well in this area, and although soft X-ray detection can be carried out in synchrotrons – big, expensive particle accelerators like the Large Hadron Collider – the search is on for cheaper, more portable, and therefore more accessible solutions.

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