ABOUT SOME NOVEL NANOSENSORS AND NANOSENSORY SYSTEMS

Concern over the consequences of harsh environmental pollution, particularly in nuclear power engineering and military base sites rise to an increasing demand for suitable means of monitoring a number of radioactive sources enriched gases, vapors at and around the occupational exposure limits. For instance, radioactive pollutants generated directly or indirectly, as a result of nuclear waste influence on different substances working in nuclear power stations (water, gases, metals, etc.) or existing nearby radioactive materials places. The need is for devices that can achieve the necessary sensitivity at a cost that will net prohibit their widespread deployment and with the capabilities to provide quantitative information as well as alarm functions. The development of new range of sensor materials has provided devices with enhanced selectivity and sensitivity for harsh, radioactive waste polluted environment monitoring. There is now a widespread need for low cost means of detecting and monitoring of nuclear radiation, electrical and thermal properties of number of substances of harsh environment. Today, nuclear radiation detection systems exist utilising a variety of solid state detectors. The solid state detectors are based on semiconductor material such as silicon, germanium, cadmium telluride, zinc oxide, etc. A major advantage of such detection systems is their extremely high energy resolution. That is, they are very good at determining exactly what the energy of the incident radiation is. A disadvantage is cost: the detectors are quite expensive as are their required electronics [1-3]. During the Cold War era, there were two major competitive research groups making gamma and neutron radiation detectors (sensors): Lawrence Berkeley National Laboratory Semiconductor Detector Group and the USSR’s Middle Machinery Ministry (comprisin