Luminescence and scintillation properties of Rb2HfCl6 crystals

Abstract We developed a scintillator based on a Rb 2 HfCl 6 crystal as a ternary halide crystal with intrinsic luminescence. In the photoluminescence spectra, two emission bands are observed at 383 and 434 nm. The 434 nm emission band for Rb 2 HfCl 6 may be attributed to [HfCl 6 ] 2− complex ion or [ZrCl 6 ] 2− impurity, since the Rb 2 HfCl 6 contained Zr as impurity at 0.62 mol %. The radioluminescence band is observed at 420 nm and can be attributed to the same origin as the photoluminescence band at 434 nm. The scintillation decay-time constants were 0.84 and 5.4 µs. The light yield was estimated to be 24,100 photons/MeV.