Compositional disordering: Nanoscale engineering of advanced crystalline scintillation materials

Abstract

This article provides an overview of the latest results in the field of improving the properties of multiatomic inorganic oxide compounds for scintillators. A possibility to control the spatial distribution of nonequilibrium carriers in the ionization track by creating a compositional disorder in the crystalline matrix is in focus. Managing the disorder at the nanoscale level creates an opportunity for the efficient energy loss by carriers during thermalization, smaller spatial dispersion, and, consequently, more efficient binding into excitons and, further, an increase in the scintillation yield. The methods to produce multicationic crystalline scintillation materials have been discussed. The effectiveness of the approach is confirmed for both activated and self-activated scintillation materials.