The first X-ray detector used was photographic film; it was found that silver halide crystallites would darken when exposed to X-ray radiation. Alkali halide crystals such as sodium iodide combined with about 0.1 percent thallium have been found to emit light when X-rays are absorbed in the material. These devices are known as scintillators, and when used in conjunction with a photomultiplier tube they can easily detect the burst of light from a single X-ray photon. Furthermore, the amount of light emitted is proportional to the energy of the photon, so that the detector can also be used as a crude X-ray spectrometer. The energy resolution of sodium iodide is on the order of 10 percent of the total energy deposited in the crystal. X-ray photons are readily absorbed by the material; the mean distance that a 0.5-million electron volt (MeV) photon will travel before being absorbed is 3 centimetres.

Semiconductor crystals such as silicon or germanium are used as X-ray detectors in the range from 1,000 electron volts (1 keV) to more than 1 MeV. An X-ray photon absorbed by the material excites a number of electrons from its valence band to the conduction band. The electrons in the conduction band and the holes in the valence band are collected and measured, with the amount of charge collected being proportional to the energy of the X-ray photon. Extremely pure germanium crystals have an energy resolution of 1 keV and an X-ray energy of 1 MeV.

Low-temperature bolometers are also used as high-resolution X-ray detectors. X-rays absorbed in semiconductors and cooled to very low temperatures (approximately 0.1 K or less) deposit a small amount of heat. Because the material has a low heat capacity at those temperatures, there is a measurable rise in temperature. Energy resolution as high as 1 eV out of 10 keV X-rays have been obtained.

X-rays also can be detected by an ionization chamber consisting of a gas-filled container with an anode and a cathode. When an X-ray photon enters the chamber through a thin window, it ionizes the gas inside, and an ion current is established between the two electrodes. The gas is chosen to absorb strongly in the desired wavelength region. With increased voltage applied across the electrodes, the ionization chamber becomes a proportional counter, which produces an amplified electrical pulse when an X-ray photon is absorbed within it. At still higher voltages, absorption of an X-ray photon with consequent ionization of many atoms in the gas initiates a discharge breakdown of the gas and causes a large electric pulse output. This device is known as a Geiger-Müller tube, and it forms the basis for radiation detectors known as Geiger counters (see radiation measurement: Geiger-Müller counters).

Applications

The earliest application of X-rays was medical: high-density objects such as bones would cast shadows on film that measured the transmission of the X-rays through the human body. With the injection of a contrast fluid that contains heavy atoms such as iodine, soft tissue also can be brought into contrast. Synchronized flash X-ray photography, made possible with the intense X-rays from a synchrotron source, can capture the image of pulsing arteries of the human heart, as shown in Figure 13, which would have appeared blurred in an image made with a conventional X-ray exposure.

A source of X-rays of known wavelength also can be used to find the lattice spacing, crystal orientation, and crystal structure of an unknown crystalline material. The crystalline material is placed in a well-collimated beam of X-rays, and the angles of diffraction are recorded as a series of spots on photographic film. This method, known as the Laue method (after the German physicist Max Theodor Felix von Laue), has been used to determine and accurately measure the physical structure of many materials, including metals and semiconductors. For more complex structures such as biological molecules, thousands of diffraction spots can be observed, and it is a nontrivial task to unravel the physical structure from the diffraction patterns. The atomic structures of deoxyribonucleic acid (DNA) and hemoglobin were determined through X-ray crystallography. X-ray scattering is also employed to determine near-neighbour distances of atoms in liquids and amorphous solids.

X-ray fluorescence and location of absorption edges can be used to identify quantitatively the elements present in a sample. The innermost core-electron energy levels are not strongly perturbed by the chemical environment of the atom since the electric fields acting on these electrons are completely dominated by the nuclear charge. Thus, regardless of the atom’s environment, the X-ray spectra of these electrons have nearly the same energy levels as they would if the atom were in a dilute gas; their atomic energy level fingerprint is not perturbed by the more complex environment. The elemental abundance of a particular element can be determined by measuring the difference in the X-ray absorption just above and just below an absorption edge of that element. Furthermore, if optics are used to focus the X-rays onto a small spot on the sample, the spatial location of a particular element can be obtained.

Just above the absorption edge of an element, small oscillations in the absorption coefficient are observed when the incident X-ray energy is varied. In extended X-ray absorption fine structure spectroscopy (EXAFS), interference effects generated by near neighbours of an atom that has absorbed an X-ray, and the resulting oscillation frequencies, are analyzed so that distances to the near-neighbour atoms can be accurately determined. The technique is sensitive enough to measure the distance between a single layer of atoms adsorbed on a surface and the underlying substrate.

Emission of X-rays from high-temperature laboratory plasmas is used to probe the conditions within them; X-ray spectral measurements show both the composition and temperature of a source. X-ray and gamma-ray astrophysics is also an active area of research. X-ray sources include stars and galactic centres. The most intense astronomical X-ray sources are extremely dense gravitational objects such as neutron stars and black holes. Matter falling toward these objects is heated to temperatures as high as 10¹⁰ K, resulting in X-ray and soft gamma-ray emissions. Because X-rays are absorbed by Earth’s atmosphere, such measurements are made above the atmosphere by apparatus carried by balloons, rockets, or orbiting satellites.