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JOURNAL OF SYNTHETIC CRYSTALS ›› 2023, Vol. 52 ›› Issue (9): 1582-1588.

• Research Articles • Previous Articles     Next Articles

Influence of Li Doping Concentration on the Optical and Scintillation Properties of NaI∶Tl,Li Crystals

WANG Jingkang1,2, WANG Chenger3, SUN Xilei3, WANG Zhihua2, LI Yunyun2, LI Huanying2, REN Guohao2, WU Yuntao2   

  1. 1. University of Shanghai for Science and Technology, Shanghai 200082, China;
    2. Shanghai Institute of Ceramics, Chinese Academy of Sciences, Shanghai 201899, China;
    3. Institute of High Energy Physics, Chinese Academy of Sciences, Beijing 100049, China
  • Received:2023-03-09 Online:2023-09-15 Published:2023-09-19

Abstract: Halide scintillation crystals with neutron-gamma dual detection capabilities show broad application prospects in the field of radiation detection. High optical quality NaI∶Tl and NaI∶Tl,Li scintillation crystals were grown by Bridgman method in this paper. The photoluminescence excitation (PLE) and emission (PL), time-resolved photoluminescence, X-ray excited radioluminescence (XEL), γ-ray detection performance and neutron-gamma discrimination performance of NaI∶Tl co-doped with different Li concentrations were systematically studied. Under the excitation of X-ray, NaI∶Tl and NaI∶Tl,Li crystals show emission peaking at 345 and 410 nm respectively, which are related to sp-s2 transitions of Tl+ ion. As the increase of Li co-doping concentration, the light yield of the crystal decreases from 41 000 photons/MeV to 23 000 photons/MeV, while the energy resolution at 662 keV deteriorates from 7.0% to 9.6%. Among the tested samples, the NaI∶Tl crystal co-doped with 1% Li has the best neutron-gamma pulse shape discrimination (PSD) performance, and the neutron-gamma PSD figure-of-merits (FoM) reaches 4.56.

Key words: NaI∶Tl,Li, scintillation crystal, Bridgman method, sp-s2 transition, neutron-gamma discrimination.

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