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Going Nuclear: Notes from the officially unofficial book tour
I work in the analytical labs at one of Europe’s oldest and largest nuclear sites: Sellafield, in northwestern England. I spend my days at the fume hood front, pipette in one hand and radiation probe in the other (and dosimeter pinned to my chest, of course). Outside the lab, I have a second job: I moonlight as a writer and public speaker. My new popular science book—Going Nuclear: How the Atom Will Save the World—came out last summer, and it feels like my life has been running at full power ever since.
Shu-Huan Liu, Aqil Hussain, Da Li, Xiaoqiang Guo, Zhuo-Qi Li, Olarewaju Mubashiru Lawal, Jiangkun Yang, Wei Chen
Nuclear Science and Engineering | Volume 191 | Number 1 | July 2018 | Pages 98-103
Technical Paper | doi.org/10.1080/00295639.2018.1450004
Articles are hosted by Taylor and Francis Online.
For evaluating the SiGe heterojunction bipolar transistors (HBTs) performance during and after gamma-ray irradiation, the characteristics of the direct current (dc) gain of the test samples changed with increasing irradiation dose, and collector current injection levels during 60Co gamma irradiation were measured and analyzed. The experimental results of the typical dc and alternating current (ac) electronic parameters before and after irradiation revealed that the base current Ib, the collector current IC, the dc current gain, and the maximum oscillation frequency fmax exhibited degradation. While other electronic parameters including the cut-off frequency fT, the ac current gain |H21|, and output capacitance CBC did not exhibit any significant change compared with those of pre-irradiation. The degradation mechanisms of the typical dc and ac parameters measured in this work were primarily analyzed. The tested results of SiGe HBTs offered some reference data for evaluating the behavior of the test type of device operated in an ionizing radiation environment.