Research Led by SBU’s Erik Muller is Finalist in R&D 100 Awards

The diamond x-ray monitor team includes from Stony Brook: Project Leader Erik Muller (back row, far right), Wenxiang “Owen” Ding (front row, third from right), Tianyi Zhou (front row, second from right) and Mengnan Zou (not pictured). Photo courtesy of Brookhaven Lab

Often referred to as the “Oscars of Invention,” the R&D 100 Awards honor the top 100 proven technological advances of the past year as determined by a panel selected by R&D Magazine. Erik Muller, Principal Investigator in the Department of Materials Science and Chemical Engineering at Stony Brook University, leads a collaborative project, “Ultra-compact Diamond X-Ray Monitors,” that has been selected as a finalist for the 2016 R&D 100 Awards.

In addition to Muller and his team, the project also includes scientists from Brookhaven National Laboratory and Case Western Reserve University who have developed x-ray detectors based on synthetic diamond that provide extraordinarily accurate measurements of x-ray flux, position and shape. The diamond x-ray beam position monitors developed by the team, led at Brookhaven Lab by the Instrumentation Division’s John Smedley, have already begun to play a vital role in x-ray beam diagnostics and have been installed in synchrotrons worldwide.

Significant advances in sensor and electronics readout design have resulted in many innovative applications not possible using previously available detectors. Not only have these innovations made a huge impact in enhancing scientific research conducted at synchrotrons, the capabilities of these detectors have extended their application to the medical dosimetry community. The radiation hardness, dynamic range and speed of diamond make it ideal for monitoring gamma ray, proton and carbon ion beams for use in cancer radiotherapy.

“I’d like to acknowledge two of my PhD students, Tianyi Zhou and Mengnan Zou, from the Department of Materials Science and Chemical Engineering, whose work has been crucial to the recent development of this research built upon the efforts of Dr. Mengjia Gaowei who graduated from the same department in 2014,” said Muller.

The Ultra-compact Diamond X-Ray Monitors project was supported by the Office of Science, the National Institutes of Health and the National Science Foundation.

Read more about diamond detectors.

Winners of the 54th annual R&D 100 Awards will be announced on November 3 at the Gaylord National Resort & Convention Center in Oxon Hill, Maryland, near Washington, DC.