CERN Accelerating science

Article
Title	Compositional engineering of multicomponent garnet scintillators: towards an ultra-accelerated scintillation response
Author(s)	Martinazzoli, Loris (CERN ; Milan Bicocca U. ; INFN, Milan Bicocca) ; Nargelas, Saulius (Vilnius, Inst. Theor. Phys. Astron.) ; Boháček, Pavel (Prague, Inst. Phys.) ; Calá, Roberto (CERN ; Milan Bicocca U. ; INFN, Milan Bicocca) ; Dušek, Michal (Prague, Inst. Phys.) ; Rohlíček, Jan (Prague, Inst. Phys.) ; Tamulaitis, Gintautas (Vilnius, Inst. Theor. Phys. Astron.) ; Auffray, Etiennette (CERN) ; Nikl, Martin (Prague, Inst. Phys.)
Publication	2022
Number of pages	11
In:	Materials Advances 3 (2022) 6842-6852
DOI	10.1039/d2ma00626j
Subject category	Engineering
Abstract	Optical, luminescence and scintillation characteristics were studied in garnet-type GAGG single-crystal scintillators grown by the Czochralski method and heavily doped with a cerium activator and a magnesium codopant at different concentrations. Emission quenching due to the formation of closely spaced Ce–Mg pairs accelerating the photoluminescence and scintillation decays down to a few nanoseconds and substantial suppression of slower decay components are observed. We show that despite a significant decrease in the scintillation yield, the coincidence time resolution and the afterglow, which are the most critically important parameters of fast scintillators, exhibited by the heavily doped GAGG:- Ce,Mg are superior to those in the state-of-the-art scintillators. Due to the peculiar feature of the GAGG host to tolerate extremely high cerium and magnesium concentrations while still maintaining a bulk single crystal form, this scintillator has a great potential for high-count-rate applications in high energy physics experiments and industries with harsh operational environments, where a lower light yield can be tolerated.
Copyright/License	publication: (License: CC-BY-NC-3.0) © 2022-2024 The Author(s)

Corresponding record in: Inspire