| Ostrogorsky Wins Major DOE Grant for Radiation-Detecting Materials
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MANE professor Aleksandar Ostrogorsky has been selected for a three-year, $783,000 grant from the Department of Energy’s National Nuclear Security Administration. The primary goal of his project is to develop better semiconductor materials for the detection of nuclear radiation, primarily gamma rays and X-rays.
Ostrogorsky will use the grant to investigate novel widebandgap semiconductor alloys based on mercury iodide (HgI2). While mercury iodide is excellent for gamma rays, he noted, “it also has drawbacks, including inferior mechanical properties. Furthermore, it cannot be produced by solidification from the melt and must be grown from the vapor phase. So we are trying to alloy HgI2 with compounds such as cadmium iodide, with a goal of obtaining materials that will combine the advantages of mercury iodine with improved mechanical properties.”
Ostrogorsky’s co-investigator, Professor A. Burger from Fisk University in Nashville, is a wellknown expert on the design, fabrication, and evaluation of electronic devices. The two institutions will cooperate in growing single crystals of widebandgap semiconductor alloys and using these alloys to fabricate better radiation detectors.
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