An approach to achieve significantly faster luminescence decay of thin-film scintillator by surface plasmons

Abstract

A fast component of 2.2 ns from the LSO thin-film scintillator was achieved through coupling of scintillator with surface plasmons of silver nanoparticles. From the emission spectra, the observed fast component is from the transition of 5d to 4f level of Ce3+ in LSO. The fast component is attributed to the enhanced spontaneous recombination rate due to the surface plasmons. The present demonstration provides an interesting approach to improve the timing resolution of scintillator, which is distinguished from these conventional methods.