Inorganic Halide Perovskite Thin Films for Neutron Detection

The need for high-efficiency radiation detectors with wide-area coverage is essential in applications such as nuclear medicine, industrial imagining, environmental radioactivity monitoring, spacecraft applications, and homeland security, among others. For these applications, the detector material should interact strongly with high-energy particles or photons, must be able to operate at high electric fields with negligible leakage current, must possess high resistivity, and must be scalable. Cesium lead bromide (CsPbBr₃) possesses excellent electric, electronic, and spectroscopic properties while showing endurance to humidity and good stability under extreme operating conditions. These properties make it an ideal material for high-energy radiation detectors. The use of CsPbBr₃ for heavily charged particle sensing is normally limited to single crystals due to the lack of deposition techniques for thick CsPbBr₃ films, which is necessary for efficient radiation and neutron sensing. This chapter shows methods that allow the deposition of perovskite thin films with controlled thickness. The close-space sublimation (CSS) process allows for the deposition of stoichiometric and high-quality CsPbBr₃ films with reduced defects and large grains with high deposition rates. Alpha and neutron particle sensing using a p-n diode is discussed. This chapter demonstrates the potential of inorganic perovskite films for alpha and neutron detectors in planar and micro-structured perovskite thin films.