X pinch with conical electrodes

Abstract

Summary form only given. A standard X pinch consists of two or more fine wires that cross at a single point as the load of a 200-500 kA pulsed power generator. At the MA current level, multi-wire, multilayer and solid conical X pinches have been proposed and tested. To simplify the X pinch load while retaining the favorable properties of the fine wire loads achieved at the 200-500 kA level, a hybrid configuration consisting of solid conical electrodes connected by a wire has been tested on the XP generator (45 ns risetime, 500 kA current). The X pinch consists of 60° cone electrodes made of tungsten with 5% copper with a 0.6-1.3 mm long wire between them. Al, Ti, Ni, NiCr, Cu, Mo, Pd, W and Au wires were loaded through 1 mm holes in the cones and tested in the experiments. Most of the wires were 50 μm diameter. In the experiments, most of the X pinches generate an intense single burst of soft x-rays and develop a single hot spot that is less than 3 μm diameter. Also, they generate less hard x-ray intensity than is measured in standard X pinches. The new configuration can be used to design a system for reloading X pinches under vacuum for application as a source of x-ray radiation for point-projection backlighting of different plasma and biological objects.