Engineering of a new single-crystal multi-ionic fast and high-light-yield scintillation material (Gd0.5-Y0.5)3Al2Ga3O12:Ce,Mg

Single crystal scintillation material (Gd0.5-Y0.5)3Al2Ga3O12 (GYAGG) doped with Ce and codoped with Mg at a small concentration was grown by Czochralski technique and studied for its scintillation properties for the first time. Czochralski technique enabled producing this multi-ionic garnet from a melt in a single crystal form and allowed solving the problems of codoping peculiar for this material in a ceramic form. Due to codoping, the scintillation kinetics of a single crystal is shorter than that in GYAGG ceramics produced before. The scintillation properties of GYAGG were found to be superior to those of solely Ce-doped or Mg-codoped Gd3Al2Ga3O12 crystal. The light yield GYAGG: Ce, Mg was found to be 52000 ph/MeV, the coefficient of the light yield temperature dependence in the temperature range 20-100oC equals to-0.37%/oC, and the scintillation decay time constant is 50 ns.