Abstract
A new scintillator material consisting of a methanol adduct of cerium trichloride with the composition CeCl3(CH3OH)4 has been discovered and crystallized in the form of large single crystals by solution growth in methanol. The peak emission of the x-ray-excited luminescence spectrum occurs at ~364 nm. A light yield of up to ~16,600 photons/MeV and an energy resolution of 11.4% were obtained using 662 keV gamma-ray photons. The scintillator decay time for 662 keV gamma-ray excitation was measured using the time-correlated, single-photon-counting method, and a nominal value of 64.4 ns was obtained.. The molecular adduct CeCl3(CH3OH)4 represents the first example of a rare-earth, metal-organic scintillator that is applicable to gamma ray, x-ray, and neutron detection.
