A well-known bottleneck to achieving synchrotron-like results in an laboratory x-ray system is the performance of laboratory x-ray sources, which have orders of magnitude lower brightness than synchrotrons and do not produce monochromatic x-rays. Performance is particularly limited in the soft/tender x-ray regime. We have developed a x-ray microfocus source called FAAST™ (Fine Array Anode Source Technology), which narrows the performance gap between laboratory-based and synchrotron-based systems. Sigray’s patented FAAST x-ray source has an anode with several user-selectable materials on it, each material producing a different characteristic spectrum, thus enabling energy optimization of the output beam. Selection of the appropriate x-ray energies results in increases of x-ray fluorescence cross-sections by as much as three orders of magnitude and has benefits for all major lab-based analyses (XRF, XRD, imaging, etc.). Sigray has made breakthroughs in the target manufacturing process that expands the selection of target materials from the standard metals to include exotic materials that emit x-rays in the soft and tender x-ray regime.
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