Radiation such as X-rays is of vital importance to humans and living organisms as it can be harmful/fatal upon accidental or unconscious exposure, or it can be utilized to diagnose and cure diseases by a controlled exposure. Therefore, radiation detectors - devices that detect, quantify and identify radiation - are essential tools in medicine, environment, science and technology for protecting against the harm of radiation and/or making use of radiation in a controlled manner for its benefits. In this project, we investigate the integration of graphene with various semiconductor materials/devices to make graphene-based X-ray detectors that can potentially offer superior detection performance and capabilities (such as ultra-high sensitivities) over the existing detector technologies, i.e., traditional semiconductor detectors, gaseous detectors and scintillators. GraSeRaD is also addressing detection of lower energy electromagnetic radiation (UV, visible and IR) with high gain and responsivity, low specific detectivity, and high speed.
The main objectives of the project GraSeRaD are as follows:
• Integrate graphene with semiconductor materials/devices to realize novel (X-ray) radiation sensors and demonstrate the potential of such sensors to surpass the state of the art radiation detectors
• Investigate various graphene-based photodetectors (infrared, visible, ultraviolet)
• Advance the state of the art in growth of graphene, engineering its integration with various substrates, and understanding its material and physical properties
• Investigate the radiation hardness of graphene to be qualified as a suitable radiation detection material
• Establish a scalable method for fabrication of graphene-based radiation sensors and photodetectors
SINTEF is the project coordinator, and researchers from SINTEF Digital (MiNaLab and Smart Sensor Systems) and SINTEF Materials and Chemistry are involved.
The project partners are the University of Oslo (Prof. Edouard Monakhov), the Norwegian University of Science and Technology (NTNU) (Prof. Justin Wells), and the company IDEAS (Dirk Meier).