Ilford Nuclear Emulsion’s are primarily used in Autoradiography and Particle Physics but due to their blue light sensitivity, they have also found applications in medical and biological research, metallurgy and the study of chemically reactive surfaces.

A photographic emulsion is essentially a dispersion of silver halide crystals in a gelatin matrix. Ilford Nuclear Emulsion’s are fundamentally the same as general purpose photographic emulsions but have several distinguishing features:

• The silver halide crystals are very uniform in size and sensitivity.
• There are very few crystals that may be developed without exposure to a charged particle (very low chemical fog).
• The silver to gelatin ratio is much higher than in a conventional emulsion.
• When such an emulsion is exposed to ionising radiation or light, clusters of silver atoms are produced. These are known as latent image centres as they are not visible until the emulsion is developed, when all the crystals containing a latent image centre are reduced to metallic silver.