Development of a nanotechnology based low-LET multi-microbeam array single cell irradiation system.

A novel single cell irradiation system using carbon nanotube (CNT) based field emission technology is proposed. The system can produce electron microbeam at a large range of pulsation frequencies and dose rates with energy between 20 and 60 keV. Different from any existing single beam microbeam device, the CNT-based system can have 10,000 microbeam pixels, each is approximately 10 microm in size and individually controlled. Microscope imaging will be used for targeting cell(s) and the coordinate(s) identification. A single cell or large number of individually selected cells can be simultaneously irradiated under real time microscope observation. This poster reports our preliminary results in the initial stage of the CNT multipixel microbeam array development-prototype single pixel CNT microbeam device development.