Organic Electronics and Organic Scintillators in Radiation Detection Applications

Ionizing radiation plays a very important role in the diagnosis and treatment of disease, particularly cancer. It is estimated that approximately half of all cancer patients should receive some form of radiation therapy during the management of their disease. While radiation has the potential to control and even cure cancer, it also has the potential to do great harm if it is not used safely. A condition for safe use of radiation is the ability to accurately measure different properties of a radiation field. Tools designed for this purpose are called radiation detectors and dosimeters. An ideal dosimeter should respond to radiation in the same way that the human body does, but most dosimeters used today are made from materials that are not particularly similar to tissue. The proposed work seeks to develop a new class of radiation detectors and dosimeters that is based on organic electronic devices. The term organic electronics is used to describe electronic devices whose composition includes at least some organic material (i.e. carbon-based) that plays a role in its functionality as an electronic device. In the context of radiation sensing and dosimetry applications, organic electronics are attractive because their composition can be optimized to tailor their response to radiation fields to be similar to that of human tissue. Over the last several years, my lab has been studying how these devices perform in fields of radiation. In addition, we have been studying the combination of organic electronic devices (in particular photodiodes) with plastic scintillators (material that gives off light when it is exposed to radiation) - a combination we have called the stemless plastic scintillation detector (SPSD). The results of these studies have been very encouraging and have identified many new avenues of exploration. In the current proposal, we will: - Develop a simulation platform to calculate the expected response of different devices to fields of radiation - Develop methods to predict optimal combinations of materials to make highly sensitive SPSDs - Improve the performance of SPSDs - Incorporate highly efficient perovskite solar cells into the SPSD design - Design and evaluate arrays of SPSDs to permit the study of 2-dimensional distribution of energy in a radiation field - Develop scintillating "inks" that can be used in ink jet printing technology to produce arrays of SPSDs in a highly cost-effective manner - Explore the design and use of wireless organic electronic detectors Together, these objectives will position my lab to be a global leader in the development and evaluation of organic electronics-based radiation detectors and dosimeters.