Microelectronics from AGH UST in portable devices of Rigaku Corporation

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The examination of stress in materials with the use of X-radiation is very important in many branches of industry, for example, in constructing parts of vehicles, planes and ships, in testing the quality of welding, or in examining the condition of metal constructions, such as bridges, power engineering constructions, pipelines, etc. The examined elements are often too large to be tested in a laboratory, hence the need for the development of portable devices capable of measuring stresses.

 

The Department of Measurement and Electronics of the Faculty of Electrical Engineering, Automatics, Computer Science and Biomedical Engineering at the AGH University of Science and Technology has for years collaborated with the Japanese company Rigaku Corporation. For the needs of portable devices, AGH UST scientists have designed very sensitive and fast hybrid pixel detectors for recording X-radiation, which has consequently allowed Rigaku Corporation to develop and launch a new product called SmartSite RS – one of the world’s smallest portable analysers of stress in metals. A part of the device is a measurement head whose dimensions allow to measure stress even in elements of inner diameter up to 200 mm. SmartSite RS uses a stress measurement method which consists in the observation of the reflection of a thin beam of X-rays from the tested element, the so-called “Debye-Scherrer diffraction rings”. The reflected X-radiation is registered by the pixel detectors designed by AGH UST scientists.

 

Many-year collaboration between the AGH UST Faculty of Electrical Engineering, Automatics, Computer Science and Biomedical Engineering and Rigaku Corporation brings mutual advantages: the company introduces new technological solutions to the market, and the scientists and researches of the Department of Measurement and Electronics use the gained experience during classes conducted at the field of study Microelectronics in Technology and Medicine.

 

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