Scintillation Properties of TlGd2Cl7 (Ce3+) Single Crystal

A novel TlGd2Cl7 single crystal with scintillation properties is presented. TlGd2Cl7 single crystals with different Ce3+-doping concentrations (0, 0.5, 1, and 5 mol%) are grown using the vertical Bridgman technique. All doped samples exhibit typical Ce3+ emission under X-ray excitation between 350 and 550 nm. Among all grown samples, the best light yield (LY) of similar to 49 700 photons/MeV and good energy resolution of 6% (full-width at half-maximum) are observed for the 5-mol%-Ce3+-doped TlGd2Cl7 crystal under an excitation of 662-keV gamma-rays at room temperature. Three exponential decay components are observed for all Ce3+-doped samples at room temperature. Faster decays are observed with the increase in the Ce3+ concentration. The effective atomic (Z) number of the proposed crystal is 64; therefore, efficient X-and gamma-ray detections could be performed with the proposed scintillator. The high LY, high effective Z number, good energy resolution, and fast scintillation response suggest that this scintillator could be employed in various applications. Further investigations are ongoing for the improvement of its scintillation properties with a higher Ce3+ concentration.