The cost of 3He is prohibitive and this has led to a significant interest in finding new materials to construct neutron detectors. We are collaborating closely with port partners at AWE Ltd. and several other companies in order to develop and evaluate 3He alternative technologies for neutron detection. In order to do this, we have a set of commercial reference devices, including 3He tubes, silicon-carbide (SiC), and CVD diamond neutron detectors. This provides us with a versatile set of known benchmarks to test new technologies against in our laboratories.
We are actively pursuing the development of organic semiconductor detector-based radiation detectors, drawing on several decades of Dr Kreouzis’ experience with organic semiconductor devices (light emitting diodes, photodiodes and photovoltaics). Our technology is fabricated in house, where we control the whole process chain from the first steps in device fabrication, right the way through to processing data from lab or field tests. Our team have established several different measurement modes for our technology using both sensitive source measure units and cheaper and more portable approaches with oscilloscopes. We are also working to scope out possible instrument solutions using this technology.
These devices undergo different phases of testing including photoconduction measurements to validate the charge carrier mobility and exposure to radiation sources such as Am-241. Our fabrication yields are in excess of 90% for creating functional devices for these tests, and we have achieved signal to noise values has high as 116 using Am-241 α lab sources.
Prior to joining QMUL Prof. Hobson worked with Micron Semiconductor and Schlumberger on the development of high temperature radiation sensors for the oil and gas industry. He continues his work with CVD diamond, enabling our group to expand into this very interesting area. We are working on the development of novel types of CVD diamond thermal neutron detectors in collaboration with Micron Semiconductor Ltd.