The detection of ionizing radiation such as X-rays, gamma rays or elementary particles such as high-energy neutrons is of fundamental importance in various fields such as medical imaging, national and industrial security, environmental monitoring, and space exploration. A highly scalable radiation detector based on perovskite nanoparticles capable of interacting with high-energy radiation in an efficient and long-lasting manner and withstanding the extremely high levels of radioactivity present inside nuclear reactors and large particle accelerators has been designed by a team from the Department of Materials Science at the University of Milan-Bicocca led by Prof. Sergio Brovelli and Prof. Anna Vedda in collaboration with ENEA, the Institute of Materials for Electronics and Magnetism (IMEM) of the National Research Council (CNR) and Shanghai Jiao Tong University.
The research results were published in the article “Extreme γ-ray radiation hardness and high scintillation yield in perovskite nanocrystals” (DOI: 10.1038/s41566-022-01103-x) in Nature Photonics (Impact Factor 39.728, Journal Citation Report (Clarivate Analytics, 2021)).