Nearby, a mysterious large black drone hovered with a distinct high-pitched buzz.
As it turns out, the drone was part of the show, a demonstration of drones used to detect gamma radiation as part of the 2022 Interaction of Ionizing Radiation with Matter University Research Alliance (IIRM-URA) Annual Technical Review. The event featured presentations, a student poster competition, tours of the Breazeale Nuclear Reactor and the Millennium Science Complex, and the drone demonstration.
The IIRM-URA was formed to tackle some challenging science with a worthy goal: Improve survivability and response in the case of a nuclear attack. The IIRM-URA consists of 15 universities, four national laboratories, and two industrial companies. Penn State is the lead research organization, and the IIRM-URA is funded by the Department of Defense’s Defense Threat Reduction Agency (DTRA).
Douglas Wolfe, professor of materials science and engineering, professor of engineering science and mechanics, professor of nuclear engineering, professor of additive manufacturing and design, and the head of the Metals, Ceramics and Coatings Processing Department of the Applied Research Laboratory (ARL) leads the Penn State efforts.
“The IIRM-URA researches how radiation and materials interact, with a goal of developing and integrating technology that will save lives and enable a better response to a nuclear attack,” Wolfe said. “We focus around three research areas, and also are working to create a diverse student pipeline to create a strong workforce that will develop and implement vital national security solutions.”
The three cross-cutting research areas include materials, devices and integration, and survivability and response.
In the first research area, researchers work to develop new materials for devices that can survive a nuclear attack by examining how ionizing radiation from a nuclear device interacts with various materials. This involves disciplines such as materials physics and chemistry, material genomics for rapid material development, and machine learning.
A drone used to detect radiation hovers near the tennis courts at the intermural fields on West Campus at Penn State University Park.
Source: Jamie Oberdick/Materials Research Institute
“We are looking at using new materials to help develop devices that can meet several metrics, such as energy resolution, response time, cost, volume, manufacturability, and ruggedness,” Wolfe said.
This builds into the second research area, devices and integration, which includes engineering solutions to the major challenges facing the construction of integrated devices across multiple detection systems, with a specific focus on photodetectors, detector electronics, and signal processing. These devices can allow detection of dirty bombs to enable law enforcement or military groups to react and neutralize the threat.
For the third research area, survivability and response, IIRM-URA researchers are studying how radiation affects devices to enable the development of electronics and detection systems that can survive a radioactive threat. This also includes developing materials that can remove or prevent contamination of warfighters and defense equipment and the ability to detect radioactive contamination on surfaces and in the air at long range.
“We want to create low-cost, high-efficiency detectors that can operate on-site at room temperature, such as the drone that was demonstrated at our event last July,” Wolfe said. “In addition, these electronics and systems would be able to withstand any radiation damage. In fact, we are also working to design electronics for banking and satellite systems that can withstand a nuclear blast and still enable us to communicate with each other.”