Mark3 operation 3e-4 torr / quad ion source @ -40kV, 1mA-9mA

[Dennis P Brown]

Nice apparatus! A side possibility; you can get single crystal silicon wafers super cheap (even select from the company what plane it was cut - 001, 011 etc.). Set it at the correct angle relative to your camera (maybe a micrometer rotation mount) and use it to get specific energies from the electron x-rays. The wafer need not be in the vacuum just line of sight to the x-ray source. Closer, of course, the better.

A side thought: one could "focus' the x-rays by placing the wafer on a circular vacuum ring and apply a moderate vacuum to deform the wafer into a spherical surface. This will weakly focus grazing x-rays off its front surface to "image" the source and provide an energy spectrum.

[Andrew Seltzman]

I'm planning to do something similar for energy. I have some CZT detectors which I'll mount on an x-y drive to position over the part of the image that I want to probe the energy at.

[Andrew Seltzman]

Some upgrades to the x-ray camera now include:
Diffrent molybdenum pinhole sizes 1.5mm, 1.0mm, 0.5mm to sharpen the image

A 3D printed sensor holder to allow zooming in by varying the distance from the sensor to the pinhole

Picture taken with a 1.5mm pinhole for 30s:

Picture taken with a 1.0mm pinhole for 30s:

Picture taken with a 0.5mm pinhole for 60s:

Picture taken with a 0.5mm pinhole for 60s (brightened):

Reducing the pinhole size noticeably sharpens the image at the expense of intensity.