Materials for extreme radiation applications: from rad-hard polymers to optical fiber-based dosimeters

by Dr Matteo Ferrari (University of Saint-Etienne)

Wednesday 24 Jul 2024, 14:00 → 16:00 Europe/Rome

C. Villi Meeting room

In high radiation areas, non-metallic materials suffer from radiation-induced effects, possibly compromising safety of the personnel and equipment operation. Irradiation and testing of specific commercial materials, such as lubricants, elastomers, 3D printing polymers, glasses and optical fibers is pivotal to experimentally asses their radiation tolerance, and minimize failure scenarios. Radiation effects are becoming more and more severe in a wide range of applications, including particle accelerators, nuclear facilities, space, medical physics and radioactive waste management. Development of radiation tolerant integrated systems require a multidisciplinary and multi-scale approach, coupling experimental activities with computational simulations.

Recent advancements on optical materials allow optical fiber-based radiation sensors to be developed, taking advantage of Radiation Induced Attenuation (RIA) and Radiophotoluminescence (RPL) mechanisms. Passive dosimeters (to measure integrated doses) and on-line detectors (providing real-time information) based on such techniques have been constructed and are able to cover dose ranges up to the MGy level.

In the seminar, overviews of fundamental knowledge and of used methodologies for radiation testing will be provided. Examples of experimental results and applications such as: the selection of lubricants and elastomers for Beam Intercepting Devices at CERN, distributed optical fiber sensors deployed around particle accelerators and dosimeters currently in use in the International Space Station will be presented. The possibility of instrumenting high radiation areas with parasitic stations for materials irradiation and with optical-fiber based sensors for integrated and real-time radiation monitoring will be discussed.