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Radiation detection research project award
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Dynasil
: 26 January, 2009 (Application Story) |
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Dynasil to undertake research contracts for the Department of Homeland Security for the detection of nuclear and radiological threats |
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Dynasil has announced that Radiation Monitoring Devices, Dynasil's research subsidiary, has been awarded three research and development contracts with three year periods of performance from the Domestic Nuclear Detection Office of the Department of Homeland Security totaling more than $5.6 million to develop new, high performance nuclear radiation detector materials targeted to protect the nation from nuclear and radiological threats.
One of the most serious threats faced by the United States is the possibility of terrorists smuggling a nuclear weapon into the country and the Department of Homeland Security is seeking improved detection equipment. Existing detectors tend to be expensive, too small, or are plagued by false alarms from naturally occurring radioactive materials, such as kitty litter and ceramics, which emit radiation.
To address this challenge, scientists at Radiation Monitoring Devices, Inc. ("RMD") will build upon their 35 years of detector development experience and examine advanced radiation detectors made from innovative semiconductor crystals. Mr Kanai Shah, RMD's Principal Investigator on these projects, stated: "The major technical challenge is to produce high purity single crystals with superior electronic properties."
These crystals are targeted to be used to build the next generation of room temperature radiation detectors that couple high sensitivity with unique discriminating ability to identify radioactive sources. This could provide Homeland Security, the military, customs, police, and first responders with the tools they need to detect and interdict these weapons of mass destruction.
According to Dr Michael Squillante, RMD's Vice President of Research, "This is a case of applying proven semiconductor processing techniques to exciting state-of-the-art electronic materials to solve a critical need and potentially save lives."
RMD has assembled a team including personnel from Raytheon Corporation and the University of Michigan which brings together expertise in materials science, detector technology and systems integration to potentially investigate, develop, manufacture and deploy the resulting systems.
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