New Approach to Tuning the Scintillation Properties of PbWO4 Crystals to Expand the Energy Range of the Detecting -Rays

It is demonstrated that the introduction of strontium ions into the lead tungstate compound PbWO4 (PWO), which isomorphically substitute lead ions in the crystal lattice, allows one to vary the scintillation yield, its temperature dependence, and the parameters of the luminescence kinetics over a wide range. With 10% substitution of lead ions in the crystal lattice, the (Pb,Sr)WO4 compound is characterized by a scintillation yield of 1000 ph/MeV and a kinetics decay constant of 40 ns, while the temperature dependence of the scintillation yield is close to that of the PWO material. On the contrary, in the compound with 80% Sr instead of Pb, the yield reaches 10,000 ph/MeV with a decay constant of 600 ns. For the compound, the scintillation yield in the temperature range of 300—400 K is characterized by a temperature coefficient of –0.6 %/°C. The first compound is of interest for experiments in high-energy physics, including spectroscopy, starting from 10 MeV without detector cooling. The second is prospective for spectrometry in geological exploration and well logging, where operation at relatively high temperatures is required.

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