Rugged Ultrafast Radiation Hard Scintillators for Nuclear Battlefield

Scintillator radiation detectors offer high sensitivity and relatively accurate radionuclide detection at a reasonable price. However, most of the available commercial scintillators have long decay times ranging from hundreds of nanoseconds to tens of microseconds. As a result, they have limited performance in high dose rate environments such as nuclear battlefields, robotic nuclear weapons test site inspections, and nuclear power plant accidents. In addition, radiation damage in the crystalline scintillators not only decreases their light output and response uniformity but also enhances phosphorescence (afterglow), leading to an increase in readout noise. A broad class of scintillators are also not mechanically robust and cannot withstand the rigors of harsh environments. This program seeks to develop ultrafast, radiation hard, and rugged scintillators for nuclear battlefields based on a novel oxide crystal. Doping, co-doping, and alloying schemes will be explored to reach the target of 1000 ph/MeV), moderate energy resolution <15% energy resolution at 662 keV , and tolerance to high radiation doses as high as 100kGy for nuclear survivability. A commercially-viable growth process will be developed to achieve low production cost. This STTR program is a collaborative effort between the University of Houston (UH) and CapeSym. Radiation hardness measurements will be conducted at Ohio State University Nuclear Reactor Laboratory (OSU-NRL).