Factors affecting rod pinch diode dose

The rod-pinch diode has been widely applied to flash radiography due to its merits of high brightness and spatial resolution. Many efforts have been committed to improve its dose while keeping the spot size small. Some factors affecting the rod pinch diode dose are reviewed, including the dose spatial distribution, the process on coupling energy to diode, the efficiency of electrons pinched to rod tip, the diode configuration, and so on. Experimental results are reported that the radiation dose of diode with LaB6 cathode increases by 12% at least compared to that of diode with graphite cathode. Some means to improve dose are analyzed.