3D Printing of Scintillating Materials (Yissum)
Our Innovation:
-◾We have developed the technology to print scintillating materials in numerous geometries using three dimensional printing of doped scintillators where the various doping materials can be chosen to tailor the detection properties to the needed applications.
-◾Rather than taking a subtractive manufacturing approach of machining a solid block into a preferred shape, we take a bottom-up approach using additive manufacturing by newly developed 3D printing techniques to directly print the required form.
Highlights:
-◾Scintillation counters for detecting and measuring ionizing radiation are widely used because they can be made inexpensively with good quantum efficiency and can measure both the intensity and the energy of incident radiation.
-◾Currently, scintillators are made either by casting a resin+hardener combination or by extrusion of a molten scintillator. These cast or extruded scintillator bars are then machined to the required geometry using standard machining techniques.
-◾The low melting/softening point of scintillators and need for a clean surface for light collection requires low-temperature machining and extreme cleanliness and the scintillator parts need polishing after machining.
-◾Cast scintillators suffer from long production times (up to 2 weeks for polymerization) and are not amenable to complex geometries due to the need to produce a complicated mold.
Our Innovation:
-◾3D printing technique for the manufacture of scintillation detectors
- Example of scintillator with complex geometry almost impossible to machine printed using our formulated materials. The thin-walled hollow cylinder is capped with a mesh to allow flow of super-fluid helium and includes external grooves for coupling to wavelength-shifting fibers. (Euro coin included for scale)
Key Features:
-◾Formulation that can be used in stereolithographic printing that exhibits 30% scintillation efficiency of commercial polystyrene based scintillators
-◾Enables the creation of scintillator designs, such as hollow or gas-filled scintillators, scintillator designs with features that are too small to be machined either directly onto the scintillator or as a mold, that cannot be achieved using a standard approach
Development Milestones:
- The next stage in the development is to perform further R&D and to select the best possible combinations of materials for various applications. In addition we will start research into the manufacture of integrated materials which will be composed of several materials, each with a specific set of desired properties.
-◾The first milestone is to finalize the design for the scintillating material, followed by the selection of materials tailored for neutron and gamma detection.
The Opportunity:
-◾Inclusion of additional dopants, such as high-Z materials or Gd can enhance detection of neutral and gamma particles
-◾Printing using multiple compounds simultaneously or continuously varying the concentration of dopants (as in Inkjet based printers) allow manufacture of scintillators with embedded wavelength-shifting fibers
New potential applications of the technique include:
-◾Low cost manufacture of gamma cameras for PET imaging,
-◾Low cost manufacture of neutron detectors to detect special nuclear material in homeland security applications.
Provisional patent application submitted
Viable prototype demonstrated; ongoing R&D to improve properties and to modify new materials to display other desired properties
14-2013-2965
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