Novel Mercurous Bromide For Enhanced Gamma Rays and Neutrons Detection Capabilities

ABSTRACT: To ensure the United States remains safe from the threat of nuclear and radiological attacks requires advanced radiation detection with the ability to quickly and accurately detect illicit nuclear materials including dirty bombs and other dangerous radioisotopes. Existing nuclear radiation systems are still heavily based on technologies developed decades ago. These old technologies have either inadequate performance or require cryogenic cooling. Although research in recent years has led to some newer classes of room temperature semiconductor detectors, none of these newer materials can simultaneously satisfy all three critically important features for a practical, advanced room temperature radiation sensor: high performance, low cost and stable operation. We propose a new class of rugged, portable, low cost and very high performance gamma ray detectors based on mercurous bromide (Hg2Br2) that can potentially act as neutron detectors as well. We are the only company in the country currently capable of growing large crystals of Hg2Br2 and we have demonstrated initial encouraging detector response to both gamma and alpha particle incident radiation. Our goal is to deliver a breakthrough in detector technology that can address the limiting issues of current technologies.; BENEFIT: The objective of our proposed Phase I research is to demonstrate the feasibility of mercurous bromide (Hg2Br2) as a suitable material for a high performance, low cost, energy efficient and robust pager form device with dual gamma-neutron detection. The novel Hg2Br2-based detector has multiple advantages over existing technologies. It has similar gamma detection performance as HgI2 but with long term stability and larger detector volume. Ultimately, the plan is to continue the development where robustness and compactness of design will be top priority and the electronics will be extended to ASIC-based for practical dual gamma-neutron hand-held prototype device development for future manufacturing and commercialization. Hg2Br2-based radiation detectors are currently not available commercially at the present time while the need for a practically deployable alternative material to commercial off-the-shelf room temperature semiconductor materials has been of significant interests from the DOD, DHS, DOE, other Federal Agencies and even private sector such as Medical OEMs and Baggage Scanner OEMs (for TSA, X-Ray CT applications). We therefore will have very competitive advantage to be one of the first to provide a domestic source for this need.