Heavy Element-Containing Semiconductors with Wide Energy Gaps for Hard Radiation Detection

Countering global pandemic such as terrorism, human and drug smuggling requires a highly efficient hard radiation (such as X-rays and -rays) detection. The holy grail for high resolution hard radiation detector is to have a semiconductor material having similar charge transport properties to low temperature germanium (Ge) single crystal but workable at room temperature. This requires a very low defect semiconductor having high mobility-lifetime products (). Proceeding our contribution in this area, herein we propose to explore the potential of new and previously reported wide band gap, heavy element-containing chalcogenide/oxide hybrid as well as metal-organic coordination polymer (MOCP) for X-ray and/or -ray detector applications. We aim for highly symmetric, high density, 3D semiconductor materials with energy band gap of greater than 1.6 eV, to accelerate the discovery and development of currently small selection of X-ray and -ray detector materials by using material design/selection, syntheses, single crystal growth, and properties characterization (structure vs. property relationship) to select potential candidate(s) suitable for hard radiation detection application. Last, but certainly not the least, research in solid state science, especially in the field of crystal growth for structure-property relationships is rapidly growing throughout the world, and yet none has done it in Saudi Arabia, to our knowledge. Hence this is an excellent opportunity for KFUPM to be the pioneer and the leader in this particular field to not only strengthen its ranking among Middle Eastern universities, but also among the worlds.