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Crystals
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New Trends of Scintillation Crystals
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New Trends of Scintillation Crystals

A special issue of Crystals (ISSN 2073-4352). This special issue belongs to the section "Inorganic Crystalline Materials".

Deadline for manuscript submissions: closed (31 July 2022) | Viewed by 11716

Special Issue Editors

Dr. Dongsheng Yuan

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Guest Editor
National Institute for Materials Science (NIMS), 1-1 Namiki, Tsukuba, Ibaraki 305-0044, Japan
Interests: functional inorganic crystals; scintillators; crystal growth technology; optical properties
Special Issues, Collections and Topics in MDPI journals
Prof. Dr. Yuntao Wu

E-Mail Website
Guest Editor
Shanghai Institute of Ceramics Chinese Academy of Sciences, Shanghai 201800, China
Interests: inorganic scintillators and their applications
Special Issues, Collections and Topics in MDPI journals
Dr. Luis Stand

E-Mail Website
Guest Editor
Department of Nuclear Engineering, The University of Tennessee, Knoxville, TN 37996, USA
Interests: single crystal scintillators; advanced crystal growth techniques; optical and physical properties

Special Issue Information

Dear Colleagues,

The past decade has witnessed the rapid progress of scintillation crystals and their applications. Whereas many scintillators have been found, none provide the desired performance combination of light yield, decay time, afterglow, and stopping power.

Recently, the intensive studies on new metal halides, Tl:Cs3Cu2I5 being one of the examples, have been paving the way to next-generation bright scintillation crystals. Beyond the traditional melt growth, these materials are also suitable for solution methods, making their crystal fabrication easier and more cost-effective. Consequently, not only emerging scintillators but also promising applications are highly anticipated in this popular and relevant topic.

Rare-earth crystals are the main family of Ce-activated scintillators, which take advantage of the relatively fast Ce 5d-4f-allowed transition. Aiming for faster scintillation, co-doping strategies are usually employed in crystals to engineer defects and control Ce valence. However, the relevant mechanisms vary for different hosts and a wide range of material systems are needed to provide evidence for the proposed Ce4+-emission model. Elucidation of these puzzles will definitely start a new epoch in the scintillator field.

Another interesting but unexploited area is the room-temperature semiconductor scintillator. The use of semiconductors for scintillation is not new, but they can only work at cryogenic temperatures (MAPbBr3 shows a light yield > 100,000 ph/MeV and a life time of 1 ns at 8 K). Carrier trapping on nonradiative recombination centers hampers the useful room-temperature operation. Nevertheless, to find a proper wide-band gap direct semiconductor and suitable dopants, trial and error is inevitable.

Besides materials, the studies on crystal growth and fabrication technologies of scintillators are also very active. With forms of nanoparticles, fibers, and other micro-structures, both crystals and related composites find new functionality in practical applications.

This Special Issue aims to present a collection of the latest studies on scintillation crystals. Research articles, review papers, and communications are all invited.

Examples of contributions include but are not limited to the following topics:

  • New scintillation materials covering from metal halides, oxides to hybrid organic-inorganic compounds;
  • Synthesis, crystal growth and scintillation characterizations;
  • Growth and fabrication techniques of scintillation crystals;
  • Fundamental study on doping strategies in scintillators;
  • Data-driven and machine-learning-assisted search for scintillation crystals;
  • Applications based on scintillation crystals, e.g., PET (positron emission tomography) and X-ray imaging.

Dr. Dongsheng Yuan
Dr. Yuntao Wu
Dr. Luis Stand
Guest Editors

Manuscript Submission Information

Manuscripts should be submitted online at www.mdpi.com by registering and logging in to this website. Once you are registered, click here to go to the submission form. Manuscripts can be submitted until the deadline. All submissions that pass pre-check are peer-reviewed. Accepted papers will be published continuously in the journal (as soon as accepted) and will be listed together on the special issue website. Research articles, review articles as well as short communications are invited. For planned papers, a title and short abstract (about 100 words) can be sent to the Editorial Office for announcement on this website.

Submitted manuscripts should not have been published previously, nor be under consideration for publication elsewhere (except conference proceedings papers). All manuscripts are thoroughly refereed through a single-blind peer-review process. A guide for authors and other relevant information for submission of manuscripts is available on the Instructions for Authors page. Crystals is an international peer-reviewed open access monthly journal published by MDPI.

Please visit the Instructions for Authors page before submitting a manuscript. The Article Processing Charge (APC) for publication in this open access journal is 2600 CHF (Swiss Francs). Submitted papers should be well formatted and use good English. Authors may use MDPI's English editing service prior to publication or during author revisions.

Keywords

  • X-ray/gamma-ray/neutron scintillators
  • single crystal growth
  • rare-earth doping
  • radioluminescence
  • radiation detection and imaging

Published Papers (4 papers)

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Research

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17 pages, 10637 KiB  
Article
Role of the Dilution of the Gd Sublattice in Forming the Scintillation Properties of Quaternary (Gd,Lu)3Al2Ga3O12: Ce Ceramics
by Mikhail Korzhik, Vasilii Retivov, Alexei Bondarau, Georgiy Dosovitskiy, Valery Dubov, Irina Kamenskikh, Petr Karpuk, Daria Kuznetsova, Valentina Smyslova, Vitaly Mechinsky, Vladimir Pustovarov, Dmitry Tavrunov, Evgeniy Tishchenko and Andrei Vasil’ev
Crystals 2022, 12(9), 1196; https://doi.org/10.3390/cryst12091196 - 25 Aug 2022
Cited by 11 | Viewed by 1564
Abstract
Technological factors and processes contributing to the scintillation mechanism have been considered in quaternary garnet ceramics doped with Ce(Gd,Lu)3Al2Ga3O12. The super-stoichiometric additive of gadolinium in the material composition or its co-doping with a low concentration [...] Read more.
Technological factors and processes contributing to the scintillation mechanism have been considered in quaternary garnet ceramics doped with Ce(Gd,Lu)3Al2Ga3O12. The super-stoichiometric additive of gadolinium in the material composition or its co-doping with a low concentration of Mg were found to be effective tools to suppress phosphorescence in the quaternary garnet, confirming that it is not an intrinsic property of the material. The Monte-Carlo simulation of electronic excitation transfer demonstrates that the hopping migration along the gadolinium sublattice plays an essential role in forming the scintillation kinetic parameters. Breaking the integrity of the gadolinium sublattice by substitution with heavier lutetium ions increases the role of self-trapped states in the excitation of Ce3+ ions, which ensures both an increase in the fraction of short ~20 ns and very long ~600 ns components in the scintillation kinetics. Full article
(This article belongs to the Special Issue New Trends of Scintillation Crystals)
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9 pages, 10567 KiB  
Article
A Compact Dual Gamma Neutron Detector Based on NaI(Tl+Li) Scintillator Readout with SiPM
by Fengzhao Shen, Qibin Fu, Tuchen Huang and Wei Wang
Crystals 2022, 12(8), 1077; https://doi.org/10.3390/cryst12081077 - 31 Jul 2022
Cited by 5 | Viewed by 1910
Abstract
Sodium iodide crystal co-doped with thallium and lithium is a promising scintillator with wide application prospects for dual gamma neutron detection. In this study, a compact gamma/neutron detector was developed based on 2-inch NaI(Tl+Li) (NaIL) scintillator readout with 8 × 8 silicon photomultiplier [...] Read more.
Sodium iodide crystal co-doped with thallium and lithium is a promising scintillator with wide application prospects for dual gamma neutron detection. In this study, a compact gamma/neutron detector was developed based on 2-inch NaI(Tl+Li) (NaIL) scintillator readout with 8 × 8 silicon photomultiplier (SiPM) array. Dedicated transimpedance amplifier circuit was developed for the SiPM array. The energy resolution and response linearity with the SiPM array were evaluated and compared to those obtained with photomultiplier tube (PMT) readout. The energy resolution for 661.6 keV gamma rays was measured as 7.0% and 6.5% with SiPM array and PMT, respectively. The linear response of the SiPM array is almost the same as that of the PMT in the energy range up to ~4 MeV. Neutron and gamma pulse shape discrimination was evaluated by acquiring the pulse waveforms with a digitizer (12 bit/250 MSPS) and off-line analysis. The best figure of merit (FOM) was measured as 3.75 for the SiPM array with optimized parameters, close to the performance measured with PMT (FOM = 4.07). The experimental results show that the NaIL scintillator readout with SiPM array exhibit energy resolution equivalent to NaI(Tl) gamma detectors and excellent neutron/gamma discrimination, making it especially suitable for compact devices requiring gamma and neutron dual detection capabilities. Full article
(This article belongs to the Special Issue New Trends of Scintillation Crystals)
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15 pages, 6864 KiB  
Article
Development and Evaluation of a Dual-Layer-Offset PET Detector Constructed with Different Reflectors
by Xi Zhang, Xin Yu, Zhiliang Zhu, Hongsen Yu, Heng Zhang, Yibin Zhang, Zheng Gu, Jianfeng Xu, Qiyu Peng and Siwei Xie
Crystals 2022, 12(1), 93; https://doi.org/10.3390/cryst12010093 - 11 Jan 2022
Cited by 2 | Viewed by 1942
Abstract
Dual-layer-offset or multi-layer-offset design of a PET detector can improve spatial resolution while maintaining high sensitivity. In this study, three dual-layer-offset LYSO detectors with three different reflectors (ESR, Toray, and BaSO4) were developed. The top layer consisted of a 17 × [...] Read more.
Dual-layer-offset or multi-layer-offset design of a PET detector can improve spatial resolution while maintaining high sensitivity. In this study, three dual-layer-offset LYSO detectors with three different reflectors (ESR, Toray, and BaSO4) were developed. The top layer consisted of a 17 × 17 array of crystals 1 × 1 × 6.5 mm3 in size and the bottom layer consisted of an 18 × 18 array of crystals 1 × 1 × 9.5 mm3 in size. Neither light guides nor optical glue were used between the two layers of crystals. A custom-designed electronics system, composed of a 6 × 6 SiPM array, two FPC cables, and a custom-designed data processing module, was used to read out signals. An optimized interaction-decoding algorithm using the center of gravity to determine the position and threshold of analog signals for timing methods was applied to generate decoding flood histograms. The detector performances, in terms of peak to valley ratio of the flood histograms and energy resolutions, were calculated and compared. The dual-layer-offset PET detector constructed with BaSO4 reflectors performed much better than the other two reflectors in both crystal identification and energy resolution. The average peak-to-valley ratio and the energy resolution were approximately 7 and 11%, respectively. In addition, the crystals in the bottom layer showed better performance at crystal identification than those in the top layer. This study can act as a reference providing guidance in choosing scintillator reflectors for multi-layer dedicated DOI detectors designed for small-animal PET imaging. Full article
(This article belongs to the Special Issue New Trends of Scintillation Crystals)
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Review

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15 pages, 2135 KiB  
Review
Requirements of Scintillation Crystals with the Development of PET Scanners
by Xin Yu, Xi Zhang, Heng Zhang, Hao Peng, Qiushi Ren, Jianfeng Xu, Qiyu Peng and Siwei Xie
Crystals 2022, 12(9), 1302; https://doi.org/10.3390/cryst12091302 - 15 Sep 2022
Cited by 7 | Viewed by 5171
Abstract
Positron emission tomography (PET) is widely used in the diagnosis of tumors, cardiovascular system diseases, and neurological diseases. Scintillation crystals are an important part of PET scanners; they can convert γ photons into fluorescent photons to obtain their energy, time, and position information. [...] Read more.
Positron emission tomography (PET) is widely used in the diagnosis of tumors, cardiovascular system diseases, and neurological diseases. Scintillation crystals are an important part of PET scanners; they can convert γ photons into fluorescent photons to obtain their energy, time, and position information. Currently, an important research goal in PET is to find scintillation crystals with better performance. In this work, the principle of scintillation crystals is introduced, and the properties and requirements of scintillation crystals in different PET scanners are analyzed. At present, Lu2(1−x)Y2xSiO5 (LYSO) is the scintillation crystal with the best comprehensive properties. LaBr3 performs even better regarding the timing characteristics and light output; however, LaBr3 has not been used in any PET scanner because of its deliquescence. Detectors made of Gd3(Ga, Al)5O12 (GAGG) exhibit a high depth of interaction (DOI) resolution and have considerable application potential. The application fields of PET are constantly expanding, and its future development aims to achieve high spatial resolution and high sensitivity, which require scintillation crystals with better performance. Full article
(This article belongs to the Special Issue New Trends of Scintillation Crystals)
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