Cathode's Heat Transfer Based on the Field Emission Electron Source Approach

Over the past century, with respect to the initial methods used in the development of X-ray sources, literature in this field has remained moderately and practically unaltered. Apart from thermionic electron sources, which due to their ease of fabrication play vital roles in all X-ray applications, only a handful of mechanical principals have been introduced. However, the rise of the always demanding medical and inspection systems, including processed tomography, radiotherapy, security control, and high throughput assembling has generated a high level of enthusiasm for an improvement in fabrication strategies. The utilization of conventional thermionic sources is restricted by their slow response time and large physical scale. Nevertheless, the field electron emission is being developed as a promising method for determining a highly controllable electron beam emission with a balanced release. An overview of four kinds of cathodes for miniature X-ray sources is presented in this paper and then, based on the cathode's heat transfer, a simulation is proposed.