TY - GEN
T1 - Purification and crystallinity results from LiZnAs and LiZnP semiconductor materials
AU - Montag, Benjamin W.
AU - Reichenberger, Michael A.
AU - Edwards, Nathaniel S.
AU - Sunder, Madhana
AU - Ugorowski, Philip B.
AU - Weeks, Joseph
AU - McGregor, Douglas S.
N1 - Publisher Copyright:
© 2014 IEEE.
PY - 2016/3/10
Y1 - 2016/3/10
N2 - Nowotny-Juza compounds continue to be explored as candidates for solid-state neutron detectors. Such devices would have greater efficiency, in a compact form, than present day gas-filled 3He and 10BF3 detectors. The 6Li(n,t)4He reaction yields a total Q value of 4.78 MeV, larger than 10B, an energy easily identified above background radiations. Hence, devices fabricated from semiconducting compounds containing either natural Li (nominally 7.5% 6Li) or enriched 6Li (usually 95% 6Li) may provide a semiconductor material for compact high efficiency neutron detectors. Starting material was synthesized by preparing equimolar portions of Li, Zn, and P sealed under vacuum (10-6 Torr) in quartz ampoules lined with boron nitride and subsequently reacted in a compounding furnace. A static vacuum sublimation in quartz was then performed to remove the volatile impurities from the synthesized material. Samples from the sublimation process were analyzed by Inductively Coupled Plasma Optical Emission Spectroscopy (ICP-OES), which showed that binaries and unreacted materials were sublimed out of the ternary material. Bulk crystalline samples were grown from the purified material. Individual samples were characterized for crystallinity on a Bruker AXS D8 DISCOVER, high-resolution x-ray diffractometer with a 0.004° beam divergence. The (220) oriented LiZnAs and LiZnP samples yielded rocking curves with a 0.235° full width at half maximum (FWHM) and 0.417° FWHM respectively.
AB - Nowotny-Juza compounds continue to be explored as candidates for solid-state neutron detectors. Such devices would have greater efficiency, in a compact form, than present day gas-filled 3He and 10BF3 detectors. The 6Li(n,t)4He reaction yields a total Q value of 4.78 MeV, larger than 10B, an energy easily identified above background radiations. Hence, devices fabricated from semiconducting compounds containing either natural Li (nominally 7.5% 6Li) or enriched 6Li (usually 95% 6Li) may provide a semiconductor material for compact high efficiency neutron detectors. Starting material was synthesized by preparing equimolar portions of Li, Zn, and P sealed under vacuum (10-6 Torr) in quartz ampoules lined with boron nitride and subsequently reacted in a compounding furnace. A static vacuum sublimation in quartz was then performed to remove the volatile impurities from the synthesized material. Samples from the sublimation process were analyzed by Inductively Coupled Plasma Optical Emission Spectroscopy (ICP-OES), which showed that binaries and unreacted materials were sublimed out of the ternary material. Bulk crystalline samples were grown from the purified material. Individual samples were characterized for crystallinity on a Bruker AXS D8 DISCOVER, high-resolution x-ray diffractometer with a 0.004° beam divergence. The (220) oriented LiZnAs and LiZnP samples yielded rocking curves with a 0.235° full width at half maximum (FWHM) and 0.417° FWHM respectively.
UR - https://www.scopus.com/pages/publications/84965018404
U2 - 10.1109/NSSMIC.2014.7431265
DO - 10.1109/NSSMIC.2014.7431265
M3 - Conference contribution
AN - SCOPUS:84965018404
T3 - 2014 IEEE Nuclear Science Symposium and Medical Imaging Conference, NSS/MIC 2014
BT - 2014 IEEE Nuclear Science Symposium and Medical Imaging Conference, NSS/MIC 2014
PB - Institute of Electrical and Electronics Engineers Inc.
T2 - IEEE Nuclear Science Symposium and Medical Imaging Conference, NSS/MIC 2014
Y2 - 8 November 2014 through 15 November 2014
ER -