Why are some materials like silicon dioxide and sapphire tolerant to radiation while others are not so tolerant?
It has to do with their hardness (me thinks) which relates to their stable structure. For something to be tolerant to radiation, its electron should not be easily knocked out by the radiation source. For its electron to be not so easily knocked out, it has to has stable structure. Look at the silicon dioxide structure: Please Register or Log in to view the hidden image! (Tetrahedral structural unit of silica (SiO2), the basic building block of the most ideal glass former)
Surely you’re going to have to define the term “tolerant” and also further specify what type of radiation you’re referring to. Without more detail I could safely answer that my shirt is tolerant of radiation. (It's a cotton/polyester blend. Please Register or Log in to view the hidden image!)
I am guessing he refers to tolerant to ionizing radiation. Those materials (silicon dioxide and sapphire) are widely used as hardened chips and insulator (for example in spacecraft and military aircraft applications) because they both can stand very high gray ionizing radiation. Gray is the SI unit of absorbed radiation dose by matter due to ionizing radiation.
You guessed correctly kira. Yes I was refering to ionzing radiation like the one produced by particle acclerators and nuclear reactors. Electronic equipment around these sort of locations must be radiation hardened in order to function correctly. http://www.mse.vt.edu/faculty/hendricks/mse4206/projects97/group02/hardening.htm http://www.iop.org/News/file_34737.pdf
Actually we do not radiation harden electronics at an accelerator usually. We shield the accelerator with concrete so the electronics is not exposed. Not sure if this applies to the monster detectors at LHC though. And for satellite electronics work, yes we do use rad hard circuits [usually CMOS as I recall] because cosmic rays cannot be easily or practically shielded.
