Characterization of the new scintillator CLYC

TL;DR

This paper evaluates the performance of the newly developed domestic CLYC scintillator, focusing on gamma-ray energy resolution and neutron/gamma discrimination capabilities, highlighting its potential for nuclear detection applications.

Contribution

It provides the first performance characterization of the domestic CLYC scintillator, including energy resolution, pulse shape discrimination, and decay mechanisms.

Findings

Energy resolution of 4.5% at 662 keV

Pulse shape discrimination FoM of 2.6

Ultrafast scintillation decay time of about 2 ns under gamma-ray excitation

Abstract

The first domestic inorganic scintillator CLYC was grown in Beijing Glass Research Instituteusing the vertical Bridgman method. In this work, we evaluated the performance of this new CLYC crystal in terms of gamma-ray energy resolution and pulse shape discrimination(PSD)capability between neutrons and gamma-rays. The decay times occurred throughdifferent scintillation mechanisms were achievedby fitting decay functions to the neutron and gamma-ray waveform structures. We found an energy resolution of 4.5% for 662-keV gamma-rays and efficient neutron/gamma PSD withFoM 2.6. Under gamma-ray excitation, there is ultrafast scintillation mechanism in CLYC, with a decay time about 2 ns,whereasthere is no evidence of ultrafast decay under thermal neutron excitation. This work contributes to promote domestic development of CLYC.