Light Yield Enhancement of 157-Gadolinium Oxysulfide Scintillator Screens for the High-Resolution Neutron Imaging

Jan Crha; Joan Vila-Comamala; Eberhard Lehmann; Christian David; Pavel Trtik

doi:10.1016/j.mex.2018.12.005

Light Yield Enhancement of 157-Gadolinium Oxysulfide Scintillator Screens for the High-Resolution Neutron Imaging

MethodsX. 2018 Dec 17:6:107-114. doi: 10.1016/j.mex.2018.12.005. eCollection 2019.

Authors

Jan Crha^{1

2}, Joan Vila-Comamala³, Eberhard Lehmann¹, Christian David⁴, Pavel Trtik¹

Affiliations

¹ Laboratory for Neutron Scattering and Imaging, Paul Scherrer Institut, Villigen PSI, CH, 5232, Switzerland.
² Faculty of Civil Engineering, Czech Technical University, 166 29, Prague, Czech Republic.
³ Institute for Biomedical Engineering, University of ETH Zürich, 8092, Zürich, Switzerland.
⁴ Laboratory for Micro- and Nanotechnology, Paul Scherrer Institut, Villigen PSI, CH, 5232, Switzerland.

Abstract

This paper reports on light yield enhancement of terbium-doped gadolinium oxysulfide based scintillator screens achieved by coating their substrates with thin layers of a high density and high atomic number material. For this purpose, iridium was chosen and layers of various thicknesses were applied by atomic layer deposition (ALD). We assessed newly developed scintillator screens for neutron absorption, light yield and spatial resolution and compared them to previously used non-iridium-coated scintillator screens. The addition of the iridium layer resulted in 65 % light yield enhancement in comparison to uncoated scintillator screens while the spatial resolution and absorption power remained unchanged. Highlights •65 % light yield enhancement of the scintillator light output with preservation of the spatial resolution•Use of atomic layer deposition for nanoengineering of the neutron sensitive scintillator screens.

Keywords: Neutron imaging detection; atomic layer deposition; gadolinium oxysulfide; iridium; neutron imaging; neutron microscope; scintillator screen.