Radiation Effects in Materials

Space applications, nuclear physics, military operations, medical imaging, and especially electronics (modern silicon processing) are obvious fields in which radiation damage can have serious consequences, i.e., degradation of MOS devices and circuits.

This book presents some advanced applications in radiation effects, thermal hydraulics, and radionuclide migration in the environment. This book covers the advances in identifying radiation effects in dense gas-metal systems, application of dense granular materials as high power targets in accelerator driven systems and irradiation facilities, evaluation of boiling heat transfer in narrow channels, and application of fluorescence quenching techniques to monitor uranium migration.

Research on radiation tolerant electronics has increased rapidly over the last few years, resulting in many interesting approaches to model radiation effects and design radiation hardened integrated circuits and embedded systems. This research is strongly driven by the growing need for radiation hardened electronics for space applications, high-energy physics experiments such as those on the large hadron collider at CERN, and many terrestrial nuclear applications, including nuclear energy and safety management. With the progressive scaling of integrated circuit technologies and the growing complexity of electronic systems, their ionizing radiation susceptibility has raised many exciting challenges, which are expected to drive research in the coming decade.

This book offers a tutorial on the response of materials to lasers, with an emphasis on simple, intuitive models with analytical and mathematical solutions, using techniques such as Laplace Transformation to solve most complex heat conduction equations.