Scintillation properties of cerium-doped Tl2LaCl5 Crystal: Investigating the effects of size and cerium concentration

초록

The cerium-doped Tl2LaCl5 (TLC: Ce3+) scintillator has emerged as a highly promising material for radiation detection applications such as positron emission tomography (PET), owing to its high effective atomic number (Zeff) density and excellent scintillation properties. In this study, we grew a large-sized TLC crystal with a diameter of approximately 1 inch; however, the resulting crystal exhibited some cracks. Comprehensive characterization reveals stable light outputs and energy resolutions across different crystal sizes with only a negligible variation observed in large size crystals. In addition, faster decay and rise times are observed with higher cerium concentrations, achieving a significant decay time reduction to 31 ns with 20 % Ce doping, comparable with commercial scintillators such as LaBr3: Ce3+. These findings underscore the potential of TLC: Ce3+ as a scalable and high-performance scintillator, suitable for advanced time-of-flight PET applications, despite the challenge posed by its hygroscopic nature for large-scale manufacturing.

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