SINGAPORE - A team of seven scientists from Nanyang Technological University is the first in the world to demonstrate an 83-year-old quantum physics theory, in a breakthrough that will pave the way for more precise NTU Assistant Professor Wong Liang Jieimaging.
Radiation such as X-rays can be produced when electrically charged particles such as electrons are accelerated to increase their energy, and passed through a material, disturbing its atoms. As atoms settle back to their original states, radiation is emitted. The NTU team, which had already been researching the production of X-rays by exposing inorganic compounds about the size of computer chips to moving electrons, turned their experiments to quantum recoil.
Both compounds have closely packed layers of atoms in repeating patterns, where each layer is a single atom thick. Building upon their previous work, the researchers developed a way to enable the same X-ray machine to generate X-rays of specific energy levels to identify human tissues more accurately.