The broader impact/commercial potential of this Small Business Innovation Research (SBIR) Phase I project is to provide government and regulatory bodies with better information gathering tools related to identification of special nuclear material. Due to the limitations of current radiation detection materials, physicists tasked with developing the next generation detector products often have no commercial supplier. This project will develop special detectors that are low-cost, rugged, and amenable to large deployment. By leveraging advancements in amorphous scintillator research and materials science, this project will enable additive manufacturing of the next generation of radiation detection tools to improve global nuclear security. This Small Business Innovation Research Phase I project develops high-efficiency neutron discriminating scintillator arrays capable of coupling to 64-channel detectors for the purposes of neutron event reconstruction. The additive manufacturing of organic glasses has significant challenges, such as bubble nucleation of dissolved gasses, stress cracking due to differences in coefficients of thermal expansion, and destabilization of the metastable glassy state. Any of these failure modes would lead to the loss of optical integrity required for high fidelity neutron event reconstruction. To fabricate segmented arrays of this type, the base formulation of organic glass scintillator material will be altered to adjust the glass transition temperature, and enable these materials to be cast into rigid molds. Through this approach highly complex pixelated arrays can be rapidly produced while maintain high performance. Development will focus on low surface energy additives and covalent modifications of the fluorophores to prevent defects during casting and annealing, as well as mold materials, surface preparation, and thermal transport properties. This award reflects NSF's statutory mission and has been deemed worthy of support through evaluation using the Foundation's intellectual merit and broader impacts review criteria.
