Prospects for new inorganic scintillators

Abstract

It is shown that it is possible to use synchrotron X-radiation to measure fast fluorescent emission in compounds not readily available in single-crystal form. Of 85 compounds tested, about half were found to have fluorescence below the limit of the technique used, which was about 0.05% of Bi/sub 4/Ge/sub 3/O/sub 12/ (BGO). Others had emissions in the 0.1 to 1% range, and a few had emissions that were both fast and above 1% of BGO. Scintillation from CeF/sub 3/ and PbCO/sub 3/ was discovered. Since only a small fraction of known compounds have ever been tested for scintillation properties, it is concluded that many of these may be useful scintillators.< <ETX xmlns:mml="http://www.w3.org/1998/Math/MathML" xmlns:xlink="http://www.w3.org/1999/xlink">&gt;</ETX>