New $25 Million Grant Boosts Nuclear Science and Security Research

The University of Tennessee, Knoxville, has joined a major national effort to reshape the future of nuclear detection, energy technology, and security research through a five-year, $25 million award from the U.S. Department of Energy’s National Nuclear Security Administration. The funding, awarded in December 2025 to a consortium led by the University of California, Berkeley, brings together six national laboratories and nine universities in a coordinated program focused on nuclear science, engineering, and nonproliferation. For UT researchers, the grant represents the fourth federal award supporting the Nuclear Science and Security Consortium, or NSSC, and provides a platform for advancing radiation-detection materials that could influence everything from nuclear safeguards to next-generation energy systems.

Research supported through the new award began in July 2026, with UT’s work centered on the discovery, production, and characterization of advanced scintillators. The university’s effort is led by Mariya Zhuravleva, a professor in the Department of Materials Science and Engineering, with joint Materials Science and Engineering–Nuclear Engineering Research Professor Chuck Melcher and Nuclear Engineering Assistant Professor Sandra Bogetic serving as co-principal investigators. Their research focuses on materials that emit light when they absorb ionizing radiation. That light can be measured and converted into information about the energy, intensity, and sometimes the origin of incoming radiation, making scintillators essential components in systems used for nuclear monitoring, medical imaging, high-energy physics, industrial inspection, and homeland security.

Scintillators are deceptively sophisticated materials. When gamma rays, X-rays, neutrons, or other energetic particles enter a scintillator, they transfer energy to the material’s electrons. The resulting excited states return toward equilibrium by releasing visible or ultraviolet photons. A detector then captures those photons and transforms them into an electrical signal. The quality of that signal depends on several properties, including light yield, energy resolution, decay time, radiation resistance, density, transparency, and the ability to distinguish one type of radiation from another. An ideal scintillator would be bright, fast, stable, affordable, easy to manufacture, and capable of delivering highly precise measurements under difficult conditions. Researchers at UT aim to identify materials that move closer to that combination and could eventually outperform today’s leading detector crystals.

Much of the work will rely on the University of Tennessee’s Scintillation Materials Research Center, directed by Melcher. The center has developed a global reputation for growing and studying crystals whose internal structure determines how efficiently they interact with radiation. Its facilities support methods including the Czochralski process, in which a crystal is pulled from a precisely controlled molten material; the Bridgman technique, which solidifies a melt through a carefully managed temperature gradient; and micro-pulling-down growth, a method capable of producing small-diameter crystals rapidly while using relatively little material. Each approach offers different advantages for controlling composition, defects, size, and scalability. Those factors are critical because a promising scintillator is not useful as a detector technology unless researchers can consistently produce crystals with uniform performance.

The UT team will combine crystal growth with advanced characterization to understand how microscopic defects and chemical substitutions affect detector behavior. Small changes in a crystal’s composition can alter the energy levels available to electrons, influencing how much light is produced and how quickly it is emitted. Trace impurities may act as activators, creating efficient pathways for light generation, while unwanted defects can trap charge carriers, reduce brightness, blur energy measurements, or cause signals to persist after the radiation event has ended. By correlating a material’s atomic structure with its optical and radiation-response properties, researchers can determine why one formulation succeeds while another fails. This approach transforms scintillator development from trial and error into a more systematic search for materials with precisely engineered performance.

The research will also address a central challenge in materials science: scaling laboratory discoveries into practical manufacturing processes. A crystal that performs exceptionally well in a small experiment may be difficult to grow in larger dimensions, vulnerable to cracking, chemically unstable, or too expensive to produce. The UT researchers will therefore investigate not only new compositions but also the processing conditions needed to manufacture high-performance scintillators reliably. Temperature control, melt chemistry, growth speed, atmosphere, post-growth treatment, cutting, polishing, and encapsulation can all affect the final detector. Establishing repeatable production methods will be essential if emerging materials are to replace current state-of-the-art scintillators in real-world radiation-detection systems.

Collaboration beyond Knoxville will broaden that effort. UT’s scintillation researchers will work with scientists at Los Alamos National Laboratory and Lawrence Berkeley National Laboratory to develop processing strategies that can optimize the performance and manufacturability of promising materials. National laboratories contribute specialized equipment, radiation sources, computational tools, and expertise in applications ranging from nuclear safeguards to defense technology. The partnership also allows researchers to test materials against demanding operational requirements rather than evaluating them only under controlled laboratory conditions. According to the investigators, the collaboration will support advances in detector materials for radiation monitoring and nuclear energy systems, where faster, more sensitive, and more selective detectors could improve the ability to identify radioactive materials and track complex nuclear processes.

The scientific program is paired with an ambitious educational mission designed to expand the national pipeline of nuclear materials specialists. UT, Oak Ridge National Laboratory, and the Air Force Institute of Technology jointly organized the first Scintillator Summer School in 2025, bringing graduate students from universities across the United States to Tennessee for intensive instruction. The program is scheduled to return in August with continued support from the Department of Energy. Participants receive hands-on experience in synthesis, crystal growth, scintillation measurements, and detector characterization, while also learning how materials research connects to nuclear security and energy applications. Training in these techniques is uncommon because it requires access to specialized furnaces, radiation sources, optical instruments, and experienced mentors. By exposing students to both fundamental science and practical measurement challenges, the program is intended to prepare researchers who can move between universities, national laboratories, industry, and government agencies.

The NSSC grant arrives as governments and research institutions confront increasingly complex demands for radiation detection. Nuclear security systems must identify illicit or accidental releases of radioactive materials while minimizing false alarms. Nuclear energy technologies require sensors that can operate in intense radiation fields, elevated temperatures, and chemically aggressive environments. Medical and scientific instruments depend on detectors that can measure faint signals with exceptional timing and energy precision. In each case, the detector’s performance is limited by the material at its core. UT’s researchers believe that progress in scintillator chemistry and crystal engineering can enable capabilities that are difficult or impossible with existing materials. By linking fundamental discoveries to scalable processing, national laboratory partnerships, and specialized workforce training, the new five-year effort positions Tennessee at the center of a broader campaign to modernize the science of radiation detection.

Web References: https://www.energy.gov/nnsa/national-nuclear-security-administration ; https://tickle.utk.edu/mse/faculty/mariya-zhuravleva/ ; https://ne.utk.edu/people/charles-l-melcher/ ; https://ne.utk.edu/people/sandra-bogetic/

References: University of Tennessee, Knoxville; Nuclear Science and Security Consortium; U.S. Department of Energy’s National Nuclear Security Administration; Scintillation Materials Research Center; Los Alamos National Laboratory; Lawrence Berkeley National Laboratory.