Abstract
Direct conversion of X-ray irradiation using a semiconductor material is an emerging technology in medical and material sciences. Existing technologies face problems, such as sensitivity or resilience. Here, we describe a novel class of X-ray sensors based on GaN thin film and GaN/AlGaN high-electron-mobility transistors (HEMTs), a promising enabling technology in the modern world of GaN devices for high power, high temperature, high frequency, optoelectronic, and military/space applications. The GaN/AlGaN HEMT-based X-ray sensors offer superior performance, as evidenced by higher sensitivity due to intensification of electrons in the two-dimensional electron gas (2DEG), by ionizing radiation. This increase in detector sensitivity, by a factor of 104 compared to GaN thin film, now offers the opportunity to reduce health risks associated with the steady increase in CT scans in today’s medicine, and the associated increase in exposure to harmful ionizing radiation, by introducing GaN/AlGaN sensors into X-ray imaging devices, for the benefit of the patient.
Highlights
Until recently, the commercialization of gallium nitride (GaN) devices was hindered by economic difficulties in the scale fabrication of GaN crystals
With the improvement of GaN fabrication, from 2010 to 2016, to a high-quality material, these difficulties have been overcome by various advances in metal-organic chemical vapour deposition (MOCVD) and molecular beam epitaxy (MBE) processing techniques; GaN-based devices are even able to significantly outperform their Si-based counterparts
Due to the inherent features of two-dimensional electron gas (2DEG) in GaN high-electron mobility transistors (HEMT), the intrinsic enhancement by a factor of 104 for the number of electrons that can be collected from single ionization events by direct conversion photon counting reveals the tremendous potential of GaN-sensors compared to current technologies, which use indirect conversion systems
Summary
The commercialization of gallium nitride (GaN) devices was hindered by economic difficulties in the scale fabrication of GaN crystals. Due to the inherent features of two-dimensional electron gas (2DEG) in GaN high-electron mobility transistors (HEMT), the intrinsic enhancement by a factor of 104 for the number of electrons that can be collected from single ionization events by direct conversion photon counting reveals the tremendous potential of GaN-sensors compared to current technologies, which use indirect conversion systems. These breakthrough findings paved the way for a paradigm shift in X-ray detector technology, while enabling a breakthrough in X-ray and computer tomography (CT) examinations by reducing the effective dose, used today in routine X-ray and CT examinations, to 1/20
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