One of the biggest concerns about the conventional detector materials used in medical X-ray imaging in fluoroscopy, CT scan, digital radiography, and other radiology methods is radiation exposure. Samsung Advanced Institute of Technology (SAIT) and Sungkyunkwan University in Seoul, Korea, seem to have come up with an advanced technology that reduces that hazard to a very minimal extent.
According to the article “Printable organometallic perovskite enables large-area low-dose X-ray imaging,” published on the 4th of October in the well-recognized Nature journal, the researchers at SAIT have developed a perovskite semiconductor material that can replace the detector material used currently.
This newly developed material will reportedly reduce radiation exposure by a margin of more than 90%. It boasts of being 20 times more sensitive in spite of having a way low price than the conventional flat panel detectors. The flat panel detectors are processed with vacuum deposition technology. It’s quite impossible to manufacture thin films of semiconductors larger in the area of this technology. It is very much possible, though, through a solution-based procedure such as bar coating if the new material is used. Commercializing this new technology will reduce the price of X-ray detectors. It’ll also be possible to scan the whole body at once.
The vice president of SAIT, In Tek Han, was quoted as ‘ In order to apply perovskite onto X-ray photons, which are highly penetrable, the material must be 1,000 times thicker than that of a solar cell, while being able to retain electric signals, converted from X-ray, for a sufficiently long time. The new method of synthesis developed from the research is a key breakthrough for the field’.
P.S. – Perovskite is a crystalline mineral named after Russian scientist Lev Perovskite, which interests the developers of solar cells & X-ray equipment due to its excellent photoelectric efficiency, which transfers light into electric current.
