The true spectrum of tribo-generated X-rays

from peeling tape

Cite as: Appl. Phys. Lett. 115, 201605 (2019); https://doi.org/10.1063/1.5129277
Submitted: 27 September 2019 . Accepted: 25 October 2019 . Published Online: 12 November 2019

M. C. Hernández-Hernández , and Juan Valentin Escobar

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Appl. Phys. Lett. 115, 201605 (2019); https://doi.org/10.1063/1.5129277 115, 201605

© 2019 Author(s).
 Applied Physics Letters ARTICLE scitation.org/journal/apl

The true spectrum of tribo-generated X-rays from

peeling tape
Cite as: Appl. Phys. Lett. 115, 201605 (2019); doi: 10.1063/1.5129277
Submitted: 27 September 2019 . Accepted: 25 October 2019 .
Published Online: 12 November 2019

 ndez-Herna
M. C. Herna  ndez and Juan Valentin Escobara)

AFFILIATIONS
Instituto de Fısica, Departamento de Fısica Quımica, Universidad Nacional Auto
 noma de Me
 xico, PO Box 20-364,
Mexico City 04510, Mexico

a)
Electronic mail: escobar@fisica.unam.mx

ABSTRACT
X-rays generated through tribological processes differ from those obtained with conventional X-ray tubes in that a substantial portion of the
total energy is emitted in pulses of order 10 ns in duration. The short duration of these pulses usually causes solid-state detectors to register
pileup events that can make the corresponding spectrum unreliable as a characterization tool. In this work, we find that a solid angle sub-
tended by the detector of 5  106 is necessary to obtain the true spectra of X-rays generated from peeling adhesive tape in a moderate vac-
uum. The maximum individual photon energy is found to be 30 keV, which is about half of that reported in previous studies that overlook
the effects of pileup. Being able to obtain a reliable spectrum may help us understand the physical processes behind this phenomenon so that
it can be optimized for present and future applications.
Published under license by AIP Publishing. https://doi.org/10.1063/1.5129277

The generation of X-rays through tribological processes1–4 [tribo-
generated X-rays (TGXs)] along with its related phenomena has raised
much interest over the past ten years in both the scientific5–8 and tech-
nological9–12 realms, in particular, due to its proven use as a source for
imaging and chemical element detection.9 TGXs are part of a more
general phenomenon named “Triboluminescence”13–15 in which a
mechanical action such as rubbing,16 cleaving,17 peeling,18,19 or
deforming20 some material produces a flash of light. The production
of TGXs can be separated into the following four stages:1,21 (1) forma-
tion of an electric double layer4,8 during contact or friction, (2) build-
up of the electric field during the separation of the contacting bodies,22
(3) formation of a discharge,23 and (4) generation of “Bremsstrahlung”
radiation. Recently, it was shown that the production of TGXs differs
from X-rays obtained with conventional X-ray tubes in that a substan-
tial portion of the total energy (50%) is emitted in short pulses of
order 10 ns in duration.1 When TGXs are produced by peeling adhe-
sive tape in a moderate vacuum [Fig. 1(a)], these X-ray bursts—which
are also present in the visible spectrum24—are concomitant with the
emission of fast electric pulses1,25 [Fig. 1(b)]. Furthermore, they are
believed to be responsible for the high collimation that allows for X-
ray images to be taken with a couple of rolls of commercially available
adhesive tape.1,9 However, the same fast nature of these pulses brings
about a previously overlooked crucial issue regarding the correspond-
ing energy spectrum. Specifically, the effect known as pileup26—a
common effect in solid-state X-ray detectors—tends to distort spectra
measured from fast processes because multiple individual events sepa-
rated by relatively short times are processed as a single one of higher
energy. Consequently, the spectra from TGXs produced by tape peel-
ing,1,27 tack,28 friction,29 or Van de Graaff-type mechanisms,30 are
likely to extend spuriously over higher energies. In this letter, we study
the effects of pileup in the measurement of X-rays generated by peeling
off-the-shelf pressure sensitive adhesive tape in order to find its true
spectrum. An accurate measurement of the spectrum will help us gain
a deeper understanding of this phenomenon and ultimately tune it to
its full potential for present and future applications. In particular, our
results may shed light on the triboelectric effect,31 which determines
the surface charge densities of stage 1.
Some previous works that have investigated TGXs1,27–30 report
individual photon energies above 60 keV. The blue trace in Fig. 1(c)
shows that, indeed, the spectrum of X-rays generated by peeling pres-
sure sensitive adhesive tape in a moderate vacuum (5 mTorr) can
reach 100 keV when measured using a cadmium telluride detector
(“CdTe”) [see Fig. 1(a)]. The spectrum shown in this figure was taken
using the detector looking through a relatively wide window of area
0.17 cm2 and shielded only by a 12 lm-thick Mylar sheet used to sus-
tain the vacuum inside the chamber. However, as we now show, the
high-energy portion of this spectrum is heavily distorted by pileup.
Note that, while pileup makes the solid-state detector count bursts

Appl. Phys. Lett. 115, 201605 (2019); doi: 10.1063/1.5129277 115, 201605-1
Published under license by AIP Publishing
 Applied Physics Letters ARTICLE scitation.org/journal/apl

FIG. 1. Schematics of the setup and evidence of pileup. (a) Diagram of the experimental setup for measuring tribogenerated X-ray spectra from peeling off-the-shelf pressure-
sensitive adhesive tape from its own-backing (Scotch-tape 550, 3M, USA) inside a vacuum chamber. The detector is placed outside the chamber and looks at the source through a
12 lm-thick Mylar sheet, allowing for the placement of pinholes and aluminum shields, while a motor pulls on the adhesive tape at constant rpm. Air pressure inside the chamber is
controlled with a bleeding valve. The solid angle subtended by the detector is X ¼ A=r 2 , where A is the exposed area of the detector’s window and r the distance to the source. The
detector may be placed farther away from the window, in which case r increases accordingly. (b) Electric pulses measured as a roll of adhesive tape are peeled at 10 cm s1 at an
air pressure of 4 mTorr. Inset: one of these pulses resolved in time, which are concomitant with X-ray bursts and occur at a rate of 10 s1 at these peeling speeds. The pulses are
measured by placing a costume-made antenna close to the tape vertex. (c) Average X-ray spectrum from 10 complete rolls of Scotch-tape peeled at 4 mTorr and 80 rpm taken using
the CdTe detector (X-123 CdTe, Amptek, USA) placed 5 cm away from the Mylar window (Advent Research Materials Ltd, U.K.). For this experiment, r ¼ ð8 þ 5Þ cm. This original
spectrum (blue trace) is attenuated numerically (gray trace) and physically (orange trace) with a 200 lm-thick Al sheet (99.9% pure, Gammex, Inc., USA). Note that these spectra
begin to differ above 25 keV (dashed vertical line) and below 7 keV. Spectra are corrected for the detector’s efficiency (given by the manufacturer) and for the attenuation from both
the Mylar window and the 5 cm path of air. The detector was calibrated using standard procedures with a 241Am source. (d) Schematic illustration of the procedure followed to obtain
the attenuated spectra in (c): the physically and numerically attenuated spectra are obtained with an aluminum shield (top process) and a virtual one (bottom process), respectively.

Appl. Phys. Lett. 115, 201605 (2019); doi: 10.1063/1.5129277 115, 201605-2
Published under license by AIP Publishing
 Applied Physics Letters ARTICLE scitation.org/journal/apl

composed of low-energy photons as single events of higher energy, the

scattering of these photons with matter depends on their individual
energies. If the detector is shielded by a material of thickness x, X-rays
get attenuated by the usual factor, expðlxÞ, where l is the attenua-
tion coefficient of the material.32 Given that l is in general a decreas-
ing function of the photon’s energy, high energy X-rays (as registered
by the detector) will be attenuated considerably more than they would
if in reality they were that energetic. Consequently, pileup will manifest
itself as a mismatch between the spectrum from X-rays attenuated
with a physical shield and a bare spectrum attenuated numerically
with a virtual shield of the same characteristics. To carry out this com-
parison [shown schematically in Fig. 1(d)], we first attenuate numeri-
cally the original spectrum with a virtual 200 lm-thick aluminum
shield. The resulting spectrum [gray trace, Fig. 1(c)] is then compared
with a new spectrum [orange trace in Fig. 1(c)] obtained by physically
shielding the detector with an aluminum sheet.
The excellent agreement between these spectra for energies below
25 keV (dashed line) and above 7 keV indicates that pileup is not
distorting the spectrum in this range. This result is consistent with
other studies28 that were able to excite the Kb1 line of silver corre-
sponding to 24.94 keV. But the clear discrepancy that begins to show
above 25 keV reveals unambiguously that at least some of the corre-
sponding counts are being distorted by pileup. Moreover, this figure
shows that the fraction of spurious events increases with energy, as
inferred by the increasing difference between the spectra as a function
energy. The observed differences below 7 keV are attributed to trapped
charges in the CdTe detector.33
Besides leading to spuriously high energy events, pileup can also
distort the spectrum in ways that are inconsistent with some of the
main stages (outlined above) of the physical process, leading to TGXs.
In the discharge stage, there are two competing mechanisms at play:
on the one hand, a low enough gas pressure is necessary to increase
the electrons’ mean free path so that they can be fully accelerated by
the field. On the other hand, some collisions against gas molecules are
necessary to create a so-called Townsend avalanche23 of electrons that
in turn can produce more X-rays. In a nutshell, decreasing the pres-
sure too much (below 3 mTorr, Ref. 7) can hinder the generation of
X-rays. But as long as the pressure is above this threshold, the spec- FIG. 2. Pressure dependency. Average normalized X-ray spectra from five tape
rolls peeled at a constant linear velocity of 3 cm s1 and at different pressures: 3.0
trum should present fewer counts at higher energies as the gas pres-
mTorr (red trace); 6.5 mTorr (blue trace); 12.0 mTorr (green trace); and 18.7 mTorr
sure increases. The spectra taken at different gas pressures [Fig. 2(a)] (gray trace), using two different pinhole diameters: (a) 4700 lm and (b) 400 lm.
using the unshielded detector looking directly through the same wide Spectra are corrected both for the detector’s efficiency (given by the manufacturer)
window of the results presented in Fig. 1(c) are at odds with this basic and for the attenuation of the Mylar window.
picture. This figure shows that there are more counts at 18.7 mTorr
than at 12.0 mTorr for energies in the range between 30 and 40 keV.
Furthermore, there seems to be no difference between the spectra solid angle subtended by the detector. To do so, one may be tempted
taken at 3.0 mTorr and 6.5 mTorr. But the data presented in Fig. 2(b) to simply place the detector farther away from the source outside the
show that when a 400 lm-diameter pinhole is placed in front of the vacuum chamber. But in this case, low-energy photons would be
detector [which corresponds to a solid angle X subtended by the detec- attenuated by air molecules, making the lower portion of the spectrum
tor of 1:96  105 , see the definition of X in Fig. 1(a)], the expected inaccurate since a small number (the number of counts) needs to be
behavior is recovered, i.e., higher pressures lead to fewer counts at multiplied by a large one (the attenuation coefficient for air). This
higher energies. We note that while the data in Fig. 2 indicate that a caveat becomes particularly relevant since the peak of the spectrum is
solid angle of 1:96  105 gives the expected behavior w/r to pressure, found at energies below 25 keV [see Fig. 1(c)], and already at 10 keV,
it gives no guarantee that pileup has been completely suppressed. lair ¼ 6:4  103 cm1 (Ref. 32). Thus, it is paramount to place the
Actually, the high-energy portion (>30 keV) of the spectrum at 3 detector right next to the Mylar window so that there is no air path for
mTorr [red trace in Fig. 2(b)] must be distorted by pileup according to X-rays to traverse. A sensible way to proceed is then to reduce the solid
the results presented in Fig. 1(c). These observations suggest that angle by placing pinholes of increasingly smaller diameters in front of
obtaining the true spectrum of TGXs is matter of reducing further the the detector until the spectrum (corrected by the corresponding X)

Appl. Phys. Lett. 115, 201605 (2019); doi: 10.1063/1.5129277 115, 201605-3
Published under license by AIP Publishing
 Applied Physics Letters ARTICLE scitation.org/journal/apl

taken using both types of detectors is necessary to obtain a spectrum

FIG. 3. Solid angle dependency. Average X-ray spectra per solid angle and per
energy bin size peeled at a pressure of 3.0 mTorr and 82 rpm, using pinholes of
four different diameters. The numbers of rolls averaged were 5 for both the 1000
lm (green trace) and 400 lm-diameter pinhole (red trace) and 20 for the 200 lm-
diameter one (black trace) and 40 for the 100lm diameter one (blue trace). All
spectra were taken using the CdTe detector at a distance of r ¼ 8 cm from the
source (no air path) and corrected both for the detector’s efficiency (given by the
manufacturer) and for the attenuation of the Mylar window.
devoid of large fluctuations at both ends. Figure 4 shows a combined
spectrum obtained using both types of detectors by peeling two sets of
20 different rolls of tape and placing the same 200 lm-diameter pin-
hole in front of the detectors to achieve a solid angle of 4:91  106 .
This spectrum was merged at 10 keV: its low (<10 keV) and high
(>10 keV) energy portions were taken using the Si (X-123SDD,
Amptek, USA) and CdTe detectors, respectively. The peak observed at
2.44 keV corresponds to the Mb1 line of lead, attributed to the compo-
sition of the custom-made holder of the Mylar window. The inset of
Fig. 4 shows the exponential decay typical of broad-band spectra aris-
ing from Bremsstrahlung radiation,34 and indicates that the maximum
energy attained in the tribogeneration of X-rays with tape is actually
30 keV, while the maximum of the distribution is found at 3 keV.
This result is consistent with the onset of pileup found in Fig. 1(c). We
note that other studies found a dependency of the spectrum on peeling
velocity,8 while the present study was performed at constant rpm. It
would be interesting to corroborate if the trends found in that particu-
lar work still hold when the proper measures are taken to suppress
pileup. The total power emitted by this radiation source is 18.5 nW as
integrated from the spectrum of Fig. 4 if an isotropic emission is
assumed. This power is almost 12 orders of magnitude smaller than
that used in typical mammography apparatus35 (3–10 kW). But so far,
the technology has already been improved to increase the yield by at
least 6 orders of magnitude in other systems that harness tribological
processes to produce commercial X-ray sources.36

matches the one obtained with the immediate previous pinhole.

Following this procedure, in Fig. 3, we show the evolution of the spec-
tra as X is reduced by two orders of magnitude, from 1:22  104 to
1:22  106 (1 mm to 100 lm-diameter pinholes). For the smaller
solid angles, very few counts are recorded per tape, and, in the case of
X ¼ 1:22  106 , as many as 40 complete rolls were necessary to
obtain enough statistics to make the comparison between the spectra
possible. The spectra for X ¼ 4:91  106 and X ¼ 1:22  106 prac-
tically overlap, which allows us to assert that a solid angle of
4:91  106 is enough to suppress pileup, albeit the optimum solid
angle that maximizes the counts without compromising accuracy in
the spectrum is likely to lie between these two values. We stress the
fact that this solid angle reduces the count-rate to the point of allowing
single-photon detection, despite these photons arriving as part of a
burst. Other studies1 considered that placing the detector far from the
source so that X ¼ 5:21  105 is enough to suppress pileup for this
system. This exceeds the solid angle required by close to a factor of 10,
which explains the high energies (up to 80 keV) reported in that par-
ticular work.
Now that we are confident in the required solid angle subtended
by the detector to suppress pileup, we can proceed to measure the true FIG. 4. The true spectrum of TGXs. Distribution of X-ray counts per second (20
spectrum of TGXs from peeling tape. The CdTe solid-state detector rolls per average) merged at 10 keV. The low (<10 keV) and high (>10 keV)
employed in the experiments presented above operates at close to energy portions were taken using CdTe and Si detectors, respectively. Both detec-
100% efficiency for energies above 20 keV (98.95% efficiency) but is tors subtended a solid angle of 4:91  106 to suppress pileup. Data were taken
using 35.9 eV and 34.0 eV per bin for the CdTe and Si detector, respectively. The
particularly unsuited to measure energies below 7 keV due to charge
angular velocity of the motor was fixed at 80 rpm, and the pressure inside the
trapping effects33 [see Fig. 1(c)]. On the other hand, Si detectors per- chamber was fixed at 5 mTorr. As the tape unwound, the tangential velocity of
form at almost 100% efficiency at low energies, but this efficiency detachment increased from 6.6 to 19.5 cm s1. The spectra were corrected by the
decreases sharply above 10 keV. Thus, a combination of the spectra corresponding detectors’ efficiencies and for the attenuation of the Mylar window.

Appl. Phys. Lett. 115, 201605 (2019); doi: 10.1063/1.5129277 115, 201605-4
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 Applied Physics Letters ARTICLE scitation.org/journal/apl

15
Being able to obtain accurate spectra as we have done in this let- D. O. Olawale, T. Dickens, W. G. Sullivan, O. I. Okoli, J. O. Sobanjo, and B.
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Appl. Phys. Lett. 115, 201605 (2019); doi: 10.1063/1.5129277 115, 201605-5
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