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Tuesday, February 28, 2012

Radiation Crystal "Ball"

Well, not a "ball", but a detector.  Most people are familiar with the term "Geiger counter".  The Geiger counter uses a detector which consists of an enclosed gas.  When radiation ionizes the gas, the ions produce an electric charge which is converted to a visual output (display, meter, etc.) and which reflects the amount of incident radiation.

Since a solid crystal is denser than air, for a given volume, the sensitivity of radiation detection is much improved.  The crystals used in radiation detection don't produce a mobile charge like in a Geiger counter.  Instead the crystals emit light in response to incident radiation.  The light is gathered by a photoelectrode.  The photoelectrode produces the electric response, proportional to the amount of light which is proportional to the amount of radiation, which is converted to a visual output.

This article discusses some work at Washington State University on crystal growth.

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