Our World Leading Technology

VEC Imaging replaces the traditional coiled filament with nanotube (NT) field emission emitter (Cold Cathode)

Benefits of our technology

chemically stable

Chemically and mechanically very stable

electricity

Optimal emission characteristics (low turn-on electric field, high emission current)

cold

Cold cathode with no heat generation (high energy efficiency)

fast

Ultra fast switching on/off cost-effective manufacturing

access

Access to tomography in image guided surgery is provided

VEC Imaging Technology

Innovative NT materials

  • Improved chemical and thermal stability
  • Better electrical and thermal conductivity
  • Enhanced field emission properties (high emission current and higher emission stability)

New cathode/emitter activation process

We have taken the cathode activation process to the next level. Our revolutionary process is based on curable liquid adhesive instead of rigid adhesive tape.

Benefits

The high flowability of liquid adhesive enables it to impregnate all micro-size pores on cathode/emitter surface and ensures activation of all emitting surface.

In contrast, rigid adhesive tape can only get into contact with top edges of  these pores/pits and therefore can only activate small portion of emitters on emitting surface.

With our process, we can also acheive reliable and reproducable results because all process parametres (including curing temperature and curing time, etc.) are easily controllable parameters.

Compared to the traditional tape process, our activation process are no longer sensitive to parametres that are hard to control (such as adhesive uniformity/strength and applied pressure, etc.), therefore we are no longer faced with large performance variation between different cathodes/emitters.

New cathode/emitter deposition process

VEC Imaging has developed and patented a Paste and Screen Printing (SP) process for making NT cathodes with high accuracy. This process overcomes critical technical difficulties resulting from the chemical vapor deposition (CVD) direct growth and electrophoretic deposition (EPD) process used today in terms of control, consistency and reproducibility, we have achieved

  • Excellent reliability and consistency on mass production scale
  • Extremely accurate control of average film thickness (± 1.5 µm) within one cathode and among different cathodes
  • Much more uniform and smooth cathode surface (surface roughness ± 2 μm)
  • Improved production yield and reduced material and production costs

Our NT Emitter Surface Morphology

(Excellent Emission Uniformity)

NT Layer: ~15μm±2μm

Conventional CNT Emitter Surface Morphology

(Weak Emission Uniformity)

CNT Layer: ~60μm±35μm

Electronic Control System

The novel technology of nanotube x-ray emitters puts high demands on the controlling hardware. It requires an electronic capable of delivering high voltage and high energy in pulses lasting only fractions of milliseconds. The Electronic Control System (ECS) has initially been developed as the control and driving source for the connected MBX Tubes. The ECS can operate upto 1400 individual nanotube-based emitters in a static tomographic imaging system with a maximum switching frequency of upto 2000 Hz per switching channel. Depending on the number of emitter channels the configuration of the ECS can change, but it is always comprised of two main components – the cathode section that controls the emitters and the Anode section that provides the High Voltage Power.

The ECS captivates with its modular concept, that allows for an application specific design on one hand, as well as flexibility and scalability. The power and interface requirements along with the number of channels define the upper part of the ECS. The X-ray emission current associated with each individual nanotube emitter is adjustable in micro-amps increments. The projection time is adjustable in 1 microsecond steps. Realtime addressable arbitrary operation-sequence of individual emitters provides new tomographic imaging modalities such as stereotactic imaging, multi energy dose modulation, Region of Interest and Volume of Interest imaging. It is even possible to equip the ECS with additional features such as individual X-ray beam steering, active X-ray focal spot size adjustment and finetuning.

High Voltage Generator

The Anode Power supply shows the same modular design and can be adapted to voltage levels ranging from 30 kV all the way upto 225 kV. The internal high switching frequency ranging from 100 kHz to 200 kHz facilitates the use small components, keeps the size small while delivering the desired power with minimal error (ripple).

The flexibility and the built-in features of the ECS make it not only the ideal driving source for the MBX Tubes but it can be used anywhere where short pulses of several Kilovolts need to be generated.

The Control engine inside the ECS closely monitors all vital signals inside as well as the condition of the connected X-ray tubes which allows predictive and preventive measures to avoid an unexpected and expensive downtime of the system.

 

 

Our Applications

Medical Applications

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Security Applications

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Industrial Applications

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High Frequency, High Voltage Products

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