GaN and SiC detectors for radiation and medicine
Gallium nitride materials are now a billion dollar industry for optoelectronics. At the same time the robust qualities of GaN make it promising for use in smaller, but no less important, specialist applications such as the nuclear and medical sectors. A case in point is the work underway by James Grant, Andrew Blue and co-workers at the Department of Physics & Astronomy, University of Glasgow. In development are detectors for harsh environments based on SiC and GaN. In parallel they are hoping to produce practical GaN UV detectors for proteomics -the study of proteins, notably that of circular dichrosim (CD).
"There is a small but very important requirement for efficient detectors in harsh radiation environments,"says James Grant."These are needed for use in critical systems in nuclear reactors and positionsensitive detectors for particle beams and advanced light sources. In particular, for experiments at the CERN Large Hadron Collider (LHC) where they will be subject to fluences of >10 15 fast hadrons/cm 2 . In a proposed upgrade, possibly in 2012, we will require tracking detectors that are able to operate at fluences of 10 16 fast hadrons/cm 2 ."This is part of a worldwide CERN based project, entitled RD50.