Scintillating Screens Based on the Single Crystalline Films of Multicomponent Garnets: New Achievements and Possibilities

Abstract

The paper is dedicated to development of the novel scintillating screens based on single crystalline films (SCF) of Ce doped ${{\rm Lu}_{3 - {\rm x}}}{{\rm Tb}_{\rm x}}{{\rm Al}_{5 - {\rm y}}}{{\rm Ga}_{\rm y}}{{\rm O}_{12}}$ multicomponent garnets at ${\rm x} = 2 - 3$ and ${\rm y} = 0 - 2.5$ onto ${{\rm Y}_3}{{\rm Al}_5}{{\rm O}_{12}}$ (YAG) and ${{\rm Gd}_3}{{\rm Al}_{2.5}}{{\rm Ga}_{2.5}}{{\rm O}_{12}}$ (GAGG) substrates using the liquid phase epitaxy (LPE) method. We report the optimized content and high scintillation figure of merit of SCF of these garnets grown by the LPE method with using PbO based flux. Namely, the ${{\rm Tb}_3}{{\rm Al}_{2.5}}{{\rm Ga}_{2.5}}{{\rm O}_{12}}:{\rm Ce}$ SCFs possess the highest values of light yield (LY) compared to all earlier investigated SCF samples, with their LY exceeding by 2.35 and 1.15 times the LY values for YAG:Ce and LuAG:Ce SCF scintillators, respectively. The SCFs of the mentioned compounds show very lower thermoluminescence in the above room temperature range and relatively fast scintillation decay.