Bulk Polymer Composites

Summary

Background

Detecting high energy radiation is important to public health, security, nuclear medicine, and astronomical research. The energy-absorbing materials used in detectors fall into two general categories. The first is highly sensitive, making it useful for safety assessment, but requires expensive and bulky ancillary cooling systems which also compromise portability. Other commonly used materials are much more economical to synthesize and operate, and are compact, but sacrifice much in the way of signal sensitivity.

There is thus a need for a method to synthesize new materials that combine the best of these two groups; high sensitivity with good energy resolution and low fabrication cost. A composite material containing an inorganic high-Z compound and a polymer would fulfill all of these criteria.      

Innovation

Applications

•  Synthesize highly-sensitive organic scintillators for products:
  • Gamma cameras used in nuclear medical imaging
  • Positron emission tomography instruments for medical imaging
  • Large area vehicle portal monitor applications that use gamma-ray and X-ray detection
  • Instrumentation for baggage check using X-ray Z-determination techniques.
• Synthesize composites scintillators
  • Portable survey meters to detect potentially hazardous radiation
  • Instrumentation for high energy particle physics research
  • Cargo inspection systems that use neutron detection. 

Advantages

• Synthesis uses inexpensive materials
• Synthesized composites possess a scintillation light yield up to 4 times higher than commercial plastic scintillators
• Composites produces photoelectric peak for high energy gamma rays.  

State Of Development

Patent Status