Our Nonproliferation and Verification R&D (NA22) office supports many R&D projects concerned with theimprovement of gamma ray and neutron detectors, often based on new enabling materials. Some projects arecarried out at national laboratories and some at universities. We also assist the DOE Office of Science inselecting projects for small business innovative research. Examples of improvements would be highresolutionroom-temperature semiconductors that could replace high-purity germanium, high-brightnessmedium-resolution scintillators that could replace sodium iodide, and solid state neutron detectors that couldreplace ~3He tubes. The objectives of the program are to enable the development of improved radiationdetectors that can distinguish special nuclear materials from naturally occurring radioactive materials as wellas industrial and medical sources. The scope of the program includes discovery of new, potentially usefulmaterials; synthesis and crystal growth; material characterization; theory and modeling of materialproperties; and prototype device fabrication. Many possible compounds and structures have been exploredand their properties are being tested under NA-22 sponsorship. In the process, NA-22-sponsored researchersare acquiring a more detailed understanding of the subtle factors that limit their performance in specificdevices and applications. While some are quite promising, they still require development before they reachcommercial maturity.
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