High-Z detectors
Unlocking the potential of High-Z materials to support advances in medical technologies and improve our understanding of the physical world.
Silicon is the workhorse when it comes to detecting or imaging optical photons, but its low stopping power means that gamma photons usually pass straight through undetected.
High-Z materials such as compound semiconductors - like CdTe, CdZnTe or lead halide perovskites - can be used to image gamma radiation, but there is still much to be learned about these materials.
In medicine, these materials could replace the bulky scintillator detectors used in SPECT and PET or significantly reduce the cost of a CT scanner. In large scientific facilities such as accelerators, these detectors will enable the investigation of samples with higher energy photons and higher fluxes, improving our understanding of the physical world.