Discovery, Crystal Growth, and Scintillation Properties of Novel Tl-Based Scintillators

Pioneered by our group, thallium (Tl)-based inorganic halide single-crystals are potential new scintillators. Most of these scintillators exhibit excellent scintillation performance, including peak emission between 370 and 450 nm, good energy resolutions, high light yield (more than 50 000 ph MeV-1) and fast decay-time (less than 40 ns). In addition, these scintillators demonstrate good pulse shape discrimination capability. The grown pure crystals show strong luminescence and high light yields due to the presence of Tl ion in the host lattice. Thanks to the high Z-number and density of the Tl, the grown scintillators have high density (rho > 4 g cm(-3)) and high effective Z-number (Z(eff) >= 60). Being hygroscopic, like other halide scintillators, these single crystals are grown by the Bridgman technique. It is expected that the discovered scintillators will perform better than most commercial scintillators used in different applications. Significant improvement in the scintillation properties are achieved with the modification of the crystal growth procedure of the grown scintillators. Preliminary results revealed that these scintillators are very promising from an application point of view, while further investigations are underway for the enhancement of the present scintillators as well as for the discovery of new compounds of this family.