Radiation detector development

Our radiation detector research activities focus on the characterisation and development of wide band gap semiconductor and scintillator materials that are suitable for operation as radiation detectors at room temperature or above.

Materials for n/gamma discrimination

Our research resolves around:

Direct detection such as semiconducting polymers
Indirect detection with novel pulse shape discriminating plastic scintillators
Novel quantum dot scintillator technology.

Get in contact

If you would like to find out more about research or want to get involved then please contact Prof Paul Sellin and Caroline Shenton-Taylor.

Plastic scintillator samples with increased absorbed radiation dose.

Room temperature semiconductor detectors

We study high Z materials for high gamma detection efficiency, like cadmium telluride, cadmium zinc telluride, mercuric Iodide and thallium bromide, as well as hard low Z materials for challenging environments such as high flux and temperature, for X-ray or gamma ray, neutron and charge particle detection.

Recent work

Recent work has focused on artificial diamond and silicon carbide (epitaxial diodes as well as bulk material) for this purpose.

We produce and characterise prototype detectors using a range of radiation sources and temperatures up to 500 K. We develop pulse processing techniques to improve performance. In addition, X-ray induced refractive index changes in a radiation signature are also explored.

Get in contact

If you would like to find out more about research or want to get involved then please contact Prof Paul Sellin.

Outstanding paper

In 2017, our work on silicon carbide and diamond detectors for neutron detection was recognised with the Outstanding Paper Award from the Journal of Measurement Science and Technology.