MARIA is Poland's only research nuclear reactor. It is used to produce radioisotopes for medicine, as well as for research, development and industrial work involving neutrons. Recently, for the first time in fifteen years, silicon doping for the semiconductor industry was carried out at the facility.

One possible use of neutron flux in a research reactor is the modification of materials. This process can be applied, among other things, to semiconductor materials, changing their electrical properties, mainly their resistivity and conductivity type. One of the materials that is widely used is doped silicon. It is increasingly used in IGBT (insulated-gate bipolar transistor) integrated circuits, which are designed to control high-power voltages in wind farms or photovoltaic farms.

In October 2025, the MARIA reactor carried out its first neutron doping of single-crystal silicon in almost fifteen years. This was part of a pilot test to determine the reactor's potential for doping silicon on a larger scale. - The test is one of the stages in the silicon refinement process, which will allow us to determine the correlations between the predicted and actual effects on real samples. It is also very important to us because all the technical solutions necessary for its implementation were developed at the National Centre for Nuclear Research: in the MARIA reactor and the Department of Nuclear Equipment - explains Grzegorz Gałązka, MSc, who is leading the project to build the silicon doping installation. 

The irradiated silicon samples will undergo electrical property testing at renowned centres such as the NCBJ Materials Research Laboratory and the Łukasiewicz Research Network Institute of Microelectronics and Photonics. Some of the samples will also be sent to potential customers for doped silicon. - The launch of the silicon doping installation in the MARIA reactor is an opportunity to develop semiconductor technology components in Poland - says Dr Marcin Kardas, Deputy Director of the National Centre for Nuclear Research (NCBJ) for Innovation and Commercialisation, initiator of the pilot test.

Currently, a team of physicists and engineers from the MARIA reactor is working on the creation of an industrial-scale doping installation. According to estimates, the reactor could provide up to 10% of the world's production of neutron-doped silicon. This material is difficult to obtain worldwide because it can only be produced in research reactors. Predictions indicate that the demand for silicon doped in this way will grow. At the same time, the number of reactors capable of carrying out the doping process is decreasing. Currently, the maximum global production is only 220 tonnes per year, with a demand of 800 tonnes.

Research into the doping process and its systematisation for different types of semiconductors will open up a new area of industry in which the potential of the MARIA reactor will be fully utilised.