A novel versatile phoswich detector consisting of single crystal scintillators

Abstract The discrimination of different types of radiations like gamma, charged particles, neutrons etc., is required in various applications in Academic, the Nuclear industry, homeland security, medical diagnostics, etc. For these versatile uses, we have developed a novel phoswich detector consisting of two promising single crystal scintillators to discriminate various kinds of radiation with a promising figure-of-merit (FOM) along with advantages over other single crystal scintillators reported so far. The high pulse-shape discrimination (PSD) for different radiations has been achieved by a novel combination of a Boron co-doped Gd3Ga3Al2O12:Ce (GGAG) crystal coupled to a CsI:Tl (CsI) single crystal in a phoswich detector design. This combination was optically coupled to a single photomultiplier tube and a desktop digitizer to build a compact detector setup. The FOM for discriminating alpha and gamma radiations was observed to be better than twice that of the FOM obtained using individual crystals. The gamma interacting in the front GGAG crystal and the back CsI crystal could also be discriminated with a distinguishing FOM that may lead to notable improvement of spatial resolution in the medical imaging applications. The gamma-gamma discrimination and the presence of Gd in GGAG makes it a suitable candidate for the detection of thermal neutrons in mixed fields. Overall, the observed significant improvement in the discrimination ability along with the remarkable versatility opens a vast scope for using this combination in various applications.