{"id":100416,"date":"2020-01-02T19:04:17","date_gmt":"2020-01-03T03:04:17","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/lifeboat.com\/blog\/2020\/01\/researchers-build-a-particle-accelerator-that-fits-on-a-chip"},"modified":"2020-01-02T19:04:17","modified_gmt":"2020-01-03T03:04:17","slug":"researchers-build-a-particle-accelerator-that-fits-on-a-chip","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/lifeboat.com\/blog\/2020\/01\/researchers-build-a-particle-accelerator-that-fits-on-a-chip","title":{"rendered":"Researchers build a particle accelerator that fits on a chip"},"content":{"rendered":"

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The accelerator-on-a-chip demonstrated in Science<\/i> is just a prototype, but Vuckovic said its design and fabrication techniques can be scaled up to deliver particle beams accelerated enough to perform cutting-edge experiments in chemistry, materials science and biological discovery that don\u2019t require the power of a massive accelerator.<\/p>\n

\u201cThe largest accelerators are like powerful telescopes. There are only a few in the world and scientists must come to places like SLAC to use them,\u201d Vuckovic said. \u201cWe want to miniaturize accelerator technology in a way that makes it a more accessible research tool.\u201d<\/p>\n

Team members liken their approach to the way that computing evolved from the mainframe to the smaller but still useful PC. Accelerator-on-a-chip technology could also lead to new cancer radiation therapies, said physicist Robert Byer, a co-author of the Science<\/i> paper. Again, it\u2019s a matter of size.<\/p>\n

Today, medical X-ray machines fill a room and deliver a beam of radiation that\u2019s tough to focus on tumors, requiring patients to wear lead shields to minimize collateral damage.<\/p>\n

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On a hillside above Stanford University, the SLAC National Accelerator Laboratory operates a scientific instrument nearly 2 miles long. In this giant accelerator, a stream of electrons flows through a vacuum pipe, as bursts of microwave radiation nudge the particles ever-faster forward until their velocity approaches the speed of light, creating a powerful beam that scientists from around the world use to probe the atomic and molecular structures of inorganic and biological materials.<\/p>\n

Now, for the first time, scientists at Stanford and SLAC have created a silicon chip<\/a> that can accelerate electrons\u2014albeit at a fraction of the velocity of that massive instrument\u2014using an infrared laser to deliver, in less than a hair\u2019s width, the sort of energy boost that takes microwaves many feet.<\/p>\n

Continue reading \u201cResearchers build a particle accelerator that fits on a chip\u201d | ><\/a><\/div><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

The accelerator-on-a-chip demonstrated in Science is just a prototype, but Vuckovic said its design and fabrication techniques can be scaled up to deliver particle beams accelerated enough to perform cutting-edge experiments in chemistry, materials science and biological discovery that don\u2019t require the power of a massive accelerator. \u201cThe largest accelerators are like powerful telescopes. There [\u2026]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":542,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[11,19,1523,4],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-100416","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-biotech-medical","category-chemistry","category-computing","category-nanotechnology"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/lifeboat.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/100416","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/lifeboat.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/lifeboat.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/lifeboat.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/542"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/lifeboat.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=100416"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/lifeboat.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/100416\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/lifeboat.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=100416"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/lifeboat.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=100416"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/lifeboat.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=100416"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}