Production

Whenever charged particles (electrons or ions) of sufficient energy hit a material, X-rays are produced.

Production by electronsedit

Characteristic X-ray emission lines for some common anode materials.

Anode material	Atomic number	Photon energy keV		Wavelength nm
		Kα1	Kβ1	Kα1	Kβ1
W	74	59.3	67.2	0.0209	0.0184
Mo	42	17.5	19.6	0.0709	0.0632
Cu	29	8.05	8.91	0.154	0.139
Ag	47	22.2	24.9	0.0559	0.0497
Ga	31	9.25	10.26	0.134	0.121
In	49	24.2	27.3	0.0512	0.455

X-rays can be generated by an X-ray tube, a vacuum tube that uses a high voltage to accelerate the electrons released by a hot cathode to a high velocity. The high velocity electrons collide with a metal target, the anode, creating the X-rays. In medical X-ray tubes the target is usually tungsten or a more crack-resistant alloy of rhenium (5%) and tungsten (95%), but sometimes molybdenum for more specialized applications, such as when softer X-rays are needed as in mammography. In crystallography, a copper target is most common, with cobalt often being used when fluorescence from iron content in the sample might otherwise present a problem.

The maximum energy of the produced X-ray photon is limited by the energy of the incident electron, which is equal to the voltage on the tube times the electron charge, so an 80 kV tube cannot create X-rays with an energy greater than 80 keV. When the electrons hit the target, X-rays are created by two different atomic processes:

1. Characteristic X-ray emission (X-ray electroluminescence): If the electron has enough energy, it can knock an orbital electron out of the inner electron shell of the target atom. After that, electrons from higher energy levels fill the vacancies, and X-ray photons are emitted. This process produces an emission spectrum of X-rays at a few discrete frequencies, sometimes referred to as spectral lines. Usually these are transitions from the upper shells to the K shell (called K lines), to the L shell (called L lines) and so on. If the transition is from 2p to 1s, it is called Kα, while if it is from 3p to 1s it is Kβ. The frequencies of these lines depend on the material of the target and are therefore called characteristic lines. The Kα line usually has greater intensity than the Kβ one and is more desirable in diffraction experiments. Thus the Kβ line is filtered out by a filter. The filter is usually made of a metal having one proton less than the anode material (e.g., Ni filter for Cu anode or Nb filter for Mo anode).
2. Bremsstrahlung: This is radiation given off by the electrons as they are scattered by the strong electric field near the high-Z (proton number) nuclei. These X-rays have a continuous spectrum. The frequency of bremsstrahlung is limited by the energy of incident electrons.

So, the resulting output of a tube consists of a continuous bremsstrahlung spectrum falling off to zero at the tube voltage, plus several spikes at the characteristic lines. The voltages used in diagnostic X-ray tubes range from roughly 20 kV to 150 kV and thus the highest energies of the X-ray photons range from roughly 20 keV to 150 keV.

Both of these X-ray production processes are inefficient, with only about one percent of the electrical energy used by the tube converted into X-rays, and thus most of the electric power consumed by the tube is released as waste heat. When producing a usable flux of X-rays, the X-ray tube must be designed to dissipate the excess heat.

A specialized source of X-rays which is becoming widely used in research is synchrotron radiation, which is generated by particle accelerators. Its unique features are X-ray outputs many orders of magnitude greater than those of X-ray tubes, wide X-ray spectra, excellent collimation, and linear polarization.

Short nanosecond bursts of X-rays peaking at 15-keV in energy may be reliably produced by peeling pressure-sensitive adhesive tape from its backing in a moderate vacuum. This is likely to be the result of recombination of electrical charges produced by triboelectric charging. The intensity of X-ray triboluminescence is sufficient for it to be used as a source for X-ray imaging.

Production by fast positive ionsedit

X-rays can also be produced by fast protons or other positive ions. The proton-induced X-ray emission or particle-induced X-ray emission is widely used as an analytical procedure. For high energies, the production cross section is proportional to Z₁2Z₂−4, where Z₁ refers to the atomic number of the ion, Z₂ refers to that of the target atom. An overview of these cross sections is given in the same reference.

Production in lightning and laboratory dischargesedit

X-rays are also produced in lightning accompanying terrestrial gamma-ray flashes. The underlying mechanism is the acceleration of electrons in lightning related electric fields and the subsequent production of photons through Bremsstrahlung. This produces photons with energies of some few keV and several tens of MeV. In laboratory discharges with a gap size of approximately 1 meter length and a peak voltage of 1 MV, X-rays with a characteristic energy of 160 keV are observed. A possible explanation is the encounter of two streamers and the production of high-energy run-away electrons; however, microscopic simulations have shown that the duration of electric field enhancement between two streamers is too short to produce a significantly number of run-away electrons. Recently, it has been proposed that air perturbations in the vicinity of streamers can facilitate the production of run-away electrons and hence of X-rays from discharges.