Building on the materials development effort of Research Area 1, IIRM-URA is working to produce integrated devices from low-cost solids with high structural flexibility. By advancing the fundamental physics of radiation-solid interactions, researchers are engineering solutions to the major challenges facing the construction of these solids to be broadly applied across multiple detection systems, with a specific focus on photodetectors, detector electronics, and signal processing.

Focus Areas (FA) of Interest

FA1 Photodetectors

Researchers are investigating photosensitive solid-state sensors for low-noise, fast-response, low-cost design and architecture for high quantum efficiency. They are specifically exploring zero-bias, high-efficiency, angle-insensitive optical photo detection from ultrathin fabry-perot sensors and high-gain, low-noise perovskite photodetectors to replace photomultiplier tubes and silicon photomultipliers.

FA2 Non-volatile memory

The alliance is characterizing radiation effects in ferroelectric field-effect transistor (FeFET) memory devices and their arrays to under the basic mechanisms of ionization-induced charge generation, collection, and transport in these devices. Through this understanding, researchers are improving FeFET radiation tolerance to total ionizing dose, high dose rate and single-event effects. They are also establishing a multi-scale materials, devices, and circuits simulation platform to mitigate the impact of radiation exposure and improve FeFET resilience using novel electrical masking techniques.

FA3 Detection electronics and signal processing

Researchers are automating information processing from sensor network surplus data to generate useful information for decision making, and implementing algorithms to enable high-performance, radiation-resistant data processing systems and design tools to dramatically increase electronic sensor utility in radiation sensing.

FA4 Non-traditional computation devices

Alliance researchers are comprehensively exploring radiation effects to develop advanced materials and designs for radiation-hard, low-noise, front-end, field-effect computation devices.