Stellar Micro Devices Wins ATP Award for Flat Panel X-ray Sources
Stellar Micro Devices (SMD) announced today that it has received a $1.99 million award from the National Institute of Standards and Technology’s Advanced Technology Program (ATP) for a two-year project to develop a flat panel X-ray source (FPXS) with a wide range of industrial, medical imaging and sterilization applications. The FPXS will generate X-ray flux across broad areas with cold cathode arrays printed on the exit window side of the panel. This will produce safer, lower energy radiation for sterilizing medical products, mail and foodstuffs, as opposed to the higher energy, radioactive isotope sources now used. FPXS panels can also replace expensive synchrotron sources in X-ray lithography. A version of the FPXS called the digitally addressable X-ray source (DAXS) will allow electronic scanning of X-ray “pixels” or patterns, to replace the mechanical movement of point sources in tomographic imaging systems such as medical CT scanners. DAXS panels will enable more compact, less expensive tomography for industrial, security and medical uses, as well as the development of new types of imaging systems such as portable CT.
Three other Texas organizations will work on the project as subcontractors. UHV Technologies of Fort Worth will develop a multi-carbon deposition tool to form the cathode arrays. Texas A & M’s National Center for Electronic Beam Sterilization Research under Dr. Suresh Pillai will help demonstrate the sterilization efficacy of the FPXS. The Digital Imaging Research Lab at the MD Anderson Cancer Center in Houston, under the leadership of Dr. Chris Shaw, will work with SMD on early medical imaging applications. Dr. Shaw’s laboratory has done leading research on breast cancer imaging, and it is hoped that the availability of new systems based on the DAXS will produce more accurate and convenient mammograms.
Mark Eaton, SMD’s President and CEO, said “This award builds on several year’s work for new types of cathode arrays and radiation sources. The ATP project should lead to major commercial opportunities and we will be spinning out a new company for this purpose. We were lucky there was an ATP competition this year, and we are very lucky to have as partners the world-class groups at Texas A & M and MD Anderson.”
SMD (www.stellar-micro.com) began operations in Austin in 2001 and has developed several applications of its core technology in vacuum nanoelectronics and vacuum microsystems. Related projects include a micro-vacuum backward wave oscillator and a high power vacuum GaN amplifier. The company also produces cold cathodes and provides custom vacuum packaging services for micro-electrical mechanical systems (MEMS). For further information please contact Mark Eaton at (512) 997-7781 or eaton@stellar-micro.com.
The SMD project was one of 56 chosen in the national ATP competition announced in April. These represent the last set of R&D projects to be funded under the ATP, which ended under the America COMPETES Act (P.L. 110-69); the Act also provides support for ongoing ATP projects, including those chosen in this competition. The ATP provided cost-shared support to enable or accelerate high-risk industrial research projects. Projects were selected for funding by a competitive, peer-reviewed process that evaluated the scientific and technical merit of each proposal and the potential for broad-based benefits to the nation if the technology were successfully developed.
For more information on ATP, please contact Michael Baum at (301) 975-2763, or visit http://www.nist.gov/public_affairs/releases/atp_2007_awards.html
