Inorganic Halide Scintillators

Scintillation detectors consisting of a scintillator material that is optically coupled to a photosensitive detector are widely used for detection and measurement of energetic photons such as X-rays and gamma-rays. The discovery and use of scintillator materials can be traced back to 1896 with Calcium tungstate, which was used following the discovery of the X-ray. This chapter describes the basic characteristics of halide materials and crystal growth techniques for halide scintillators and review of the discovered novel ternary and quaternary halide scintillators and new material design approach. There are various techniques to prepare single crystals of halides, and among them, few techniques are suitable for production of single crystals with a large dimension for use in scintillation crystal-based ionizing radiation detectors. Study of mixed-anion halide scintillators shows that they have potential as a new material design technique to improve scintillation properties.