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Portfolio News and Multimedia

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LLNL-led Project to Advance Muon-Based Imaging in DARPA-Funded Initiative

Today we can see inside seemingly impossible places thanks to muon imaging. This technique uses muons, which can penetrate far deeper than possible with x rays.  But this process is also slow. Scientists at Lawrence Livermore National Laboratory (LLNL) are working to change that with a new initiative called Intense and Compact Muon Sources for Science and Security (ICMuS2).

Partnering with industry and academic researchers, the initiative seeks to rapidly generate these particles using high power lasers. The project is funded by the Defense Advanced Research Projects Agency’s Muons for Science and Security Program.

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Lab instrument now on two-billion-mile journey to the metallic asteroid Psyche

An instrument designed and built by LLNL researchers departed Earth last week on a two-billion-mile, nearly six-year journey through space to explore a rare, largely metal asteroid.

The Livermore high-purity germanium (HPGe) gamma-ray sensor is an essential part of a larger gamma-ray spectrometer (GRS) built in collaboration with researchers from Johns Hopkins Applied Physics Laboratory (JHAPL) in Laurel, Maryland. It is part of a suite of instruments set to make the first-ever visit to Psyche, the largest metal asteroid in the solar system. The Psyche mission is led by Arizona State University (ASU).

RaFTS: Radiation Field Training Simulator

Training realistically to respond to the threat of radiological terrorism is a real problem. Using actual radiological materials to train federal, state, and local agencies who detect and respond to these threats is extremely expensive, adds risk, and can’t replicate many of the scenarios of concern. LLNL’s Radiation Field Training Simulator (RaFTS) is a programmable device that injects realistic radiation source signals into suitably adapted operational radiation detection and identification devices (spectrometers). RaFTS enables highly realistic scenarios to simulate truly hazardous situations but without the need, expense or risks of using actual radiological material. In 2020, RaFTS was licensed by Argon Electronics Ltd (UK) to add significant capability to their line of CBRN hazard simulators.

Radiation Detection Technologies

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Transparent Scintillators

Transparent ceramic fabrication allows the production of gadolinium- , lutetium-, and terbium-based garnets which are difficult to grow by melt techniques due to phase instabilities. Phase stabilization of the garnets is accomplished by the addition of the intersubstitutional ions, Gallium and/or Scandium.

Scientists have developed many versatile and scaleable fabrication methods.…

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Natalia Zaitseva examines a single crystal growing in a solution-growth crystallizer developed for production of stilbene crystals for fast neutron detection

LLNL researchers have grown and characterized scintillator crystals of Strontium Iodide (SrI2). Scintillator energy resolution and light yield proportionality surpass NaI and are similar to LaBr3. The SrI2 scintillators doped with europium (Eu) exhibit very high light yields (> 100,000 photons/MeV), extremely good energy resolution (<3% at 662 keV) and excellent light yield…

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Next generation pillar detector

LLNL's neutron "Pillar Detector" fabrication technology uses semiconductor-based micro-structured elements as an electrical signal generation medium for the detection of neutrons. These materials in the form of semiconductor "pillars" embedded in matrix of high cross-section neutron converter materials (such as Boron) that emit charged particles upon interaction with neutrons. These charged…