The Exploration of Rare Earths Based Luminescence for Detection and Sensing in Radiation Security and Enhanced Oil Recovery

Dirty bomb or radiation attack is a big threat to the world and the developing of high sensitive technologies for radiation detection is an emerging need. Also, the development of high-performance scintillating materials is essential for precision calorimetry in high energy physics, medical imaging and industries. The most frequently considered characteristics of scintillators are efficiency of energy conversion, stopping power, luminescence decay time, spatial resolution, and physical and chemical stability. Currently applied inorganic crystalline scintillators are not only limited by their high cost and scalability issues, but also limited by other intrinsic drawbacks. For example, high purity germanium must be operated at liquid nitrogen temperature, while sodium iodide crystal is highly hygroscopic. On the other hand, plastic scintillators based on polymeric materials are cheap and easy to manufacture, but have low light yield and low density. In this talk, I will present the strategy for how to design luminescence nanomaterials based on energy transfer for radiation detection.

Oil exploration and production are always the hot area as natural oil is still the major energy for our society. Luminescence materials may play an important role in oil exploration and extraction either as water tracers or as new materials for wettability enhancement. In addition, food quality and safety are related to our daily life. In this talk, I also present some new ideas and methods for the potential applications of luminescence materials for oil recovery and food safety.