Ionizing Radiation Detectors Based on Solution-Grown Organic Single Crystals

Organic single crystals (OSCs) have ideal qualities (well defined structure and morphology, lack of grain boundaries, high purity, 3D long range order, good electronic transport properties) for several technological applications, in particular as key components for electronic devices. It is only recently that OSCs have been considered as ionizing radiation detectors, and the latest developments in this field are here reported. In the first section, various methods for OSC growth are described, with emphasis on cost-effective, solution-based approaches capable of delivering large volume, well performing crystals. The second section is focused on the use of solution-grown OSCs as scintillators (i.e., as high energy photon to UV-vis photon conversion), highlighting the ability of cm-scale OSCs to effectively detect neutrons and to carry out neutrons-gamma pulse-shape discrimination tasks. Finally, the third section describes the use of semiconducting, solution-grown OSCs as effective solid state direct detectors (i.e., directly converting high energy photons into charge carriers), evidencing extremely promising performances in terms of operability in environmental conditions (i.e., no need for encapsulation), radiation hardness, linear response and low operating voltage.