The authors of the new work have made a perovskite-based detector that detects leaks at nuclear power plants.
Perovskite crystals are used in scientificexperiments due to their property of making electricity from photons. But researchers were able to reverse this process and tuned perovskites to capture neutrons: thanks to this, they created a radioactive material leak detector.
Perovskite is a relatively rareon the surface of the Earth is a mineral of calcium titanate, the crystals of which have a pseudocubic shape. It is used in solar cells. But they can be used for more than just solar cells: the same trapping mechanism that perovskites have can be used for other types of subatomic particles, such as neutrons.
Free neutrons appear as a resultnuclear reactions, so a perovskite device can capture different concentrations of neutrons to find leaks in nuclear power plants or among radioactive materials that are improperly stored or transported.
The authors of the new study useda compound called methylammonium lead tribromide. They exposed it to a neutron source, and tiny electrical currents began to appear as a result. This happens because neutrons penetrate into the nuclei of the atoms of the crystal, exciting them and transferring them to a higher energy state. The process then quickly breaks down into gamma rays, which charge the perovskite and create a measurable current.
The final version of the detector looked like a perovskite crystal wrapped in gadolinium foil. As a result, it was possible to amplify the signal and even measure the direction and size of the neutron flux.
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