Composite Scintillators

Abstract

AbstractIn this chapter, organic–inorganic composite scintillators are introduced with the main focus on nanocomposites. In the field of materials science, organic–inorganic nanocomposites have been used for wide applications. They are designed to offer the advantages of both organic and inorganic counterparts and synergetic effects of the composites. A rich variety of optical materials have been developed based on polymers and inorganic nanoparticles. In spite of the intriguing functionality of the nanocomposites, the fabrication of uniform nanocomposites is challenging in preventing the aggregation of the inorganic nanoparticles. Some strategies to overcome the main issues are introduced in Sect. 6.1.1. Also, two related optical phenomena inherent to nanocomposites are introduced in Sect. 6.1.2: one is the scattering at the interface between the inorganic and organic phases, and the other is the quantum confinement effects of semiconductor nanocrystals, which are attractive inorganic phosphors in nanocomposite scintillators. Subsequently, examples of nanocomposite scintillators prepared by different approaches and design principles are explained. Nanocomposite scintillators have been developed mainly to obtain high detection efficiency for high-energy photons such as X-rays and gamma-rays or thermal neutrons similar to the cases of loaded plastic scintillators. This discussion is complementary to recent review papers and several dedicated chapters of this book [Bertrand et al. in Chem Eur J 20(48), 15660 (2014); Hajagos et al. in Adv. Mater. 30:1706956, 2018; Koshimizu in Mater. Lett. 13:2030003, 2020] [1, 2, 3].