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Scientists have made history by successfully turning on the world's smallest particle accelerator for the first time. With a size similar to a small coin, this astonishing discovery holds enormous potential for a variety of applications, including the use of miniature particle accelerators for medicinal purposes.
The NEA's Tiny Structure
The NEA is a cutting-edge technology made up of a microscopic microprocessor and an even smaller vacuum tube made up of thousands of individual pillars. By directing microscopic laser beams onto these tiny pillars, researchers have developed a way for accelerating electrons. Surprisingly, the main acceleration tube within the NEA is only 0.02 inches (0.5 millimeters) long, which is 54 million times shorter than the massive 16.8-mile-long (27-kilometer) ring housing CERN's Large Hadron Collider (LHC) in Switzerland, the world's largest and most powerful particle accelerator.
Nano-Scale Precision
The interior of the NEA's tiny tunnel is around 225 nanometers broad. According to the National Nanotechnology Institute, the thickness of a human hair ranges between 80,000 and 100,000 nanometers.
Acceleration of Electrons
Researchers from the Friedrich-Alexander University of Erlangen-Nuremberg (FAU) in Germany used the NEA to accelerate electrons in a recent study published in the journal Nature. They effectively increased electron energy from 28.4 kiloelectron volts (keV) to 40.7 keV, a 43% increase. This is the first successful activation of a nanophotonic electron accelerator, which was first proposed in 2015.
Particle Acceleration on a Microchip
Study co-author Roy Shiloh, a physicist at FAU, stressed the achievement's unprecedented significance, adding that it is the first time they can honestly refer to a "particle accelerator on a microchip."
In contrast to Large Particle Accelerators
The LHC uses almost 9,000 magnets to create a magnetic field for particle acceleration, whereas the NEA uses light beams focused at the vacuum tube's pillars to magnify energy, resulting in a far lower energy field. Electrons accelerated by the NEA have substantially less energy than electrons accelerated by major colliders such as the LHC. However, experts believe that by experimenting with different materials or stacking many tubes together, they can improve particle acceleration even further. Despite this, the NEA will not achieve energy levels equivalent to those of massive particle colliders.
Possibilities for Medical Applications
One of the key goals of developing these small accelerators is to exploit the energy released by accelerated electrons to deliver tailored medicinal treatments, perhaps replacing more invasive forms of radiotherapy used to battle cancer cells. The ultimate goal is to mount a particle accelerator on an endoscope, allowing radiotherapy to be delivered directly to afflicted parts of the body. This transformational application, however, remains a long-term goal.
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