Composition engineering of single crystalline films based on the multicomponent garnet compounds

Abstract The paper demonstrates our last achievement in development of the novel scintillating screens based on single crystalline films (SCF) of Ce doped multicomponent garnets using the Liquid Phase Epitaxy (LPE) method. We report in this work the optimized content and excellent scintillation properties of SCF of Lu 3-x Gd x Al 5-y Ga y O 12 , Lu 3-x Tb x Al 5-y Ga y O 12 and Tb x Gd x Al 5-y Ga y O 12 garnet compounds grown by the LPE method from PbO B 2 O 3 based melt-solution onto Gd 3 Al 2.5 Ga 2.5 O 12 and YAG substrates. We also show that the Tb 1.5 Gd 1.5 Al 2.5 Ga 2.5 O 12 :Ce SCF possess the highest light yield (LY) in comparison with all ever grown garnet SCF scintillators. Namely, the LY of these SCF exceeds by 3.8 and 1.85 times the LY values of the best samples of YAG:Ce and LuAG:Ce SCF scintillators, respectively. The SCF samples of the mentioned compounds show low thermoluminescence in the above room temperature range and relatively fast scintillation decay time t 1/e in the 180–200 ns range.