ABSTRACT
Over 100 years ago, radiation detectors were used to discover x rays and natural radiation emissions, and those discoveries led to Wilhelm Roentgen receiving the first Nobel prize in physics in 1901, and Henri Becquerel sharing in the third physics prize in 1903. Roentgen’s radiation detector was a plate coated with a scintillating platinocyanide material. Becquerel’s radiation detector was simply a photographic plate. Radiation detectors of a wide variety are used for detecting, measuring, characterizing, and classifying radiation emissions. The three main functions that characterize a radiation detector are (1) a radiation absorber, (2) an observable phenomenon from the interaction, and (3) a method to measure the observable. Regarding the first requirement, clearly the detector will not function if radiation simply passes through it without interacting in some capacity, so the device must be designed to somehow absorb the radiation of interest, whether that be neutrons, gamma rays, x rays, charged particles, or even cosmic rays and neutrinos. Not all materials work equally well for each of these different forms of ionizing radiation, hence, the choice of absorber is important. Second, after absorbing energy from a radiation interaction, the detector must yield some observable phenomenon to the user, otherwise, the interaction will go unnoticed. Third, whatever the phenomenon is, a method must exist to measure it quantitatively or qualitatively. Although these concepts are simple, their effective implementation can often be elusive.
