Recent Advances in Scintillator Materials
A special issue of Crystals (ISSN 2073-4352). This special issue belongs to the section "Inorganic Crystalline Materials".
Deadline for manuscript submissions: 20 September 2025 | Viewed by 117
Special Issue Editor
Interests: scintillators; development of luminescent materials in the single crystalline and crystals forms; energy transfer proceses in scintillators; defects and dopant as emission and trapping centers in dielectrics
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Special Issue Information
Dear Colleagues,
Scintillating materials are well-known converters for the transformation of high-energy photons and particles (X- or ɣ-rays, electrons, protons, neutrons, alfa particles, or heavy ions) into ultraviolet–visible light. Over the last 30 years, considerable effort has been made to create new scintillation materials for high-energy physics and advanced imaging systems for application in industry, science, biology, and medicine. The majority of newly developed single-crystal scintillators are based on Ce3+- , Pr3+-, and Eu3+-doped materials due to their fast scintillation response (up to 100 ns) and high light yield, connected with the 5d–4f radiative transitions of these ions. However, other materials doped with isoelectronic impurities (Na+, Sc3+, La3+) with respect to core cations and mercury-like ions (Tl+, Pb2+, Bi3+) are also considered effective scintillator materials.
Typically, the best scintillation figure of merit is provided by single-crystal scintillators; however, not all efficient materials can be grown in the form of bulk crystals using conventional Czochralski or Bridgman methods with sufficiently large dimensions and prices for practical applications. For this reason, optical ceramics have been used as an alternative to crystals to provide bulk optical elements in cases where crystals cannot be grown, or when transparent ceramics show superior properties in comparison with crystals. However, applications demand very high uniformity and structural quality of scintillation ceramic in comparison with bulk crystals because point defects, mainly on the border of the grain, can seriously limit material performance due to the introduction of trapping levels in the material band gap.
New X-ray-based imaging applications with submicrometer spatial resolution have required the development of thin-film scintillators with micrometer-scale thicknesses. Liquid-phase epitaxy (LPE) technology is often used for the growth of high-quality single crystalline films of different optical materials. Furthermore, LPE technology offers the possibility of creating multilayered composite film–crystal scintillators for the simultaneous registration of different components of ionization radiation. Modern medical therapies such boron neutron capture therapy strongly demand the development of such scintillators for in situ radiation dosimetry of different quanta and particles in mixed radiation fields. However, the limited performance of film and composite scintillators in LPE technology is connected to film–substrate misfits and the influence of flux-related impurities on the scintillation properties.
Other types of advanced medical therapies, such as photodynamic therapy, strongly demand the development of nanocomposite scintillators. Rare-earth-doped inorganic nanopowders are also considered for biomedical applications as luminescent nanoprobes. Nanocomposite materials have also become a hot topic in the field of scintillators, with the aim of preparing bulk transparent materials where scintillation characteristics are defined by a nano-phase embedded in a crystal host.
In this Special Issue, we aim to introduce and describe in more detail the current status of R@D in bulk, film, film–crystal and nanocomposite scintillators, prepared using different technological methods. Both technological descriptions and the various characterization methods of scintillation materials, together with application aspects in the mentioned fields, will be provided.
Prof. Dr. Yuriy Zorenko
Guest Editor
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Keywords
- scintillators
- crystals, films, ceramics, nanopowders
- melt growth, liquid-phase epitaxy, and solid-state reactions
- luminescence
- energy transfer processes
- defects
- dopants
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