Growth and Characterization of Polycrystalline Lanthanide Halide Scintillators.

We are exploring a novel time- and cost-efficient approach to produce robust, large-volume polycrystalline lanthanide halide scintillators using a hot wall evaporation (HWE) technique. To date, we have fabricated LaBr:Ce and LaCl:Ce films (slabs) measuring up to 7 cm in diameter and 7+ mm in thickness (20 to 25 cm in volume) on quartz substrates. These polycrystalline scintillators exhibit very bright emissions approaching those exhibited by their melt-grown crystal counterparts.