Research on the Response Characteristics of Various Inorganic Scintillators Under High-Dose-Rate Irradiation from Charged Particles

With the advent of novel scintillators featuring higher atomic numbers and enhanced radiation hardness, these materials exhibit potential applications under high-dose-rate irradiation. In this work, we systematically compared the photon output characteristics of ten mainstream or emerging inorganic scintillators under high-dose-rate irradiation with low-energy (0.1–1.7 MeV) electrons or protons. Initially, under electron irradiation among ~0.1 to ~50 rad/s, responses exhibited saturation trends to varying degrees, with their variations conforming to the saturation model proposed. However, under proton irradiation among ~5 rad/s to ~150 rad/s, responses exhibited sigmoidal trends due to competition between radiation-induced defects and luminescence centers. Through dynamic derivation of carriers and them, a triple-balance model that demonstrated close agreement with such variations was established. Subsequently, energy-dependent responses under proton irradiation exhibited marked nonlinearity, which were well fitted by Birks’ law, confirming the validity of our measurements. In contrast, electron-induced responses remained nearly linear with increasing energy. Then, after high-dose-rate and prolonged irradiation, BGO revealed highest response degradation, while YAG(Ce) demonstrated most radiation-damage resistance. Moreover, Ce-doped scintillators displayed higher afterglow levels after prolonged irradiation, particularly for YAG(Ce). In summary, these experimental analyses can provide critical guidance for material selection and effective calibration of scintillator detectors operating under high-dose-rate radiation from charged particles.