Photonic nanostructures to revolutionise the position sensitivity of gamma-ray scintillator detectors

电离辐射通常用作医学成像或其他射线照相方法中的非破坏性探头，以获得通过目视检查无法获得的信息。电离辐射的检测在国土安全和其他应用中也发挥着重要作用，如考古学和艺术史。最后，电离辐射的检测在寻求回答广泛的基础物理学问题中起着关键作用。一些最广泛使用的电离辐射探测器是闪烁晶体，它将入射的辐射转换成可见的闪烁光，可以被耦合到闪烁体的光电传感器检测到。在这个项目中，我们感兴趣的是通过开发一种改进的技术来提高闪烁体探测器的灵敏度，将闪烁体表面耦合到光电传感器。这将提供一种相对经济的方式来改善闪烁体的性能，并有可能影响使用这些探测器的许多社会应用，而且还为通常使用这种闪烁器的基础科学研究提供了改进的灵敏度。

Ionising radiation is commonly used as a non destructive probe in medical imaging or other radiography methods to obtain information that isnot available through visual inspection. Detection of ionising radiation plays a major role also in homeland security and other applications as diverse as archeometry and history of art. Finally, detection of ionising radiation plays a key role in the quest for answering a wide range of fundamental physics questions. Some of the most widely used ionising radiation detectors are scintillating crystals, which covert the incoming radiation into visible, scintillation light that can be detected by photosensors coupled to the scintillator.In this project we are interested in improving the sensitivity of scintillator detectors by developing an improved technology for coupling the scintillator surface to the photonsensors. This will provide a relatively economic way to improve a scintillator's performance and has the potential to impact many of the societal applications where these detectors are used but also offer an improved sensitivity for fundamental science research where such scintillators are commonly used.