Overview of new and emerging radiation resistant materials for space environment applications

A brief overview of materials for use with a myriad of optical, photonic, electro-optic and photovoltaic devices are of great importance to DOD, NASA and the general space community. A substantial amount of investigation has been directed towards ascertaining the radiation resistance or hardness of some of these materials and devices for application to avionic systems, near-Earth orbits, the lunar surface and interplanetary exploration missions. While mature inorganic components aimed at these extra-terrestrial environments have also proven to work well by providing most of the required resistance to radiation for operational functionality, this overview addresses recently reported new approaches for evolving radiation hardened photonic and coating technologies based on nanoparticle compositions in organic-polymer materials and hybrid nanoparticle technologies based on inorganic and polymer-organic materials. In some cases, the polymer-based materials are shown to be more radiation resistant than their inorganic counterparts.