Methods For A Systematic, Comprehensive Search for Fast, Heavy Scintillator Materials

Abstract

ABSTRACTOver the years a number of scintillator materials have been developed for a wide variety of nuclear detection applications in industry, high energy physics, and medical instrumentation. To expand the list of useful scintillators, we are pursuing the following systematic, comprehensive search: (1) select materials with good gamma-ray interaction properties from the 200,000 data set NIST crystal diffraction file, (2) synthesize samples (doped and undoped) in powdered or single crystal form, (3) test the samples using sub-nanosecond pulsed x-rays to measure important scintillation properties such as rise times, decay times, emission wavelengths, and light output, (4) prepare large, high quality crystals of the most promising candidates, and (5) test the crystals as gamma-ray detectors in representative configurations. An important parallel effort is the computation of electronic energy levels of activators and the band structure of intrinsic and host crystals to aid in the materials selection process.