High Performance Scintillator for Nuclear Physics Research

Crystal calorimeters have a long history of advancing the frontier on high-resolution electromagnetic (EM) and hadronic calorimetry. Scintillator crystals are extensively used for both types of calorimeters, but the existing scintillator crystals are facing critical challenges. As the luminosities at colliding-beams have increased, radiation damage of the detector components has become more and more a point of concern. For example, at hadron colliders, scintillation-based calorimeters have become less favored. At the Compact Muon Solenoid (CMS) experiment of Large Hadron Collider (LHC), where PbWO4 crystals were chosen particularly because of its radiation hardness through many studies with ionizing electromagnetic radiation and hadrons, the endcap region of the calorimeter system is becoming unusable at a fast pace, after having received only a small fraction of the planned total integrated luminosity. Under this SBIR program, we will develop and commercialize an extremely radiation-hard non-hygroscopic high-density robust scintillator with high light yield and short decay time. The major tasks of Phase I would be: (a) optimization of chemistry and growth of scintillator crystals, (b) characterization of the radiation detection properties, and (c) demonstration of the scintillator’s radiation hardness. The radiation-hard scintillators to be developed under this program will be used for calorimeter detectors in nuclear physics experiments. In addition to nuclear physics experiments, these scintillators have immense potential for commercial radiation detection applications in military and homeland security. The developed material also has a large potential market in high power devices.