New High Performance Scintillators Based on Re-Activated Insulator Materials

In this paper we address the problem of the host-to-ion energy transfer in some RE-activated wide band gap materials excited by ionizing radiation. We argue that, despite the expected self-localization of holes, the dominant mechanism in efficient materials involves sequential trapping of both charge carriers (holes and electrons) by an activating RE-ion followed by a radiative recombination via the ion producing scintillation light. Selected experimental results are presented to illustrate how various energy transfer processes manifest themselves in the spectroscopy of scintillator materials. Experimental results combined with simple considerations are used to identify these RE-ions which are likely to act as hole or electron traps in tri- and difluorides, thus initiating the recombination sequence leading to efficient scintillation.