Scintillators-interest

Wikipedia

The first device which used a scintillator was built in 1903 by Sir William Crookes and used a
ZnS screen.[3][4] The scintillations produced by the screen were visible to the naked eye if viewed
by a microscope in a darkened room; the device was known as a spinthariscope. The technique
led to a number of important discoveries but was obviously tedious. Scintillators gained
additional attention in 1944, when Curran and Baker replaced the naked eye measurement with
the newly developed PMT. This was the birth of the modern scintillation detector.[3]
The scintillation process in inorganic materials is due to the electronic band structure found in
crystals and is not molecular in nature as is the case with organic scintillators. [16] An incoming
particle can excite an electron from the valence band to either the conduction band or the exciton
band (located just below the conduction band and separated from the valence band by an energy
gap; see picture). This leaves an associated hole behind, in the valence band. Impurities create
electronic levels in the forbidden gap. The excitons are loosely bound electron-hole pairs which
wander through the crystal lattice until they are captured as a whole by impurity centers. The
latter then rapidly de-excite by emitting scintillation light (fast component). The activator
impurities are typically chosen so that the emitted light is in the visible range or near-UV where
photomultipliers are effective. The holes associated with electrons in the conduction band are
independent from the latter. Those holes and electrons are captured successively by impurity
centers exciting certain metastable states not accessible to the excitons. The delayed deexcitation of those metastable impurity states again results in scintillation light (slow
component).
BGO is a pure inorganic scintillator without any activator impurity. There, the scintillation
process is due to an optical transition of the Bi3+ ion, a major constituent of the crystal. [6] A
similar process exists in CdWO4.
1.

The following figure which closely resembles to Wikipedia description, was

taken from Google [[PDF]

Kein Folientitel
http://hsag.physik.unibonn.de/docs/lectures/StudentExperimentSS08/chap_03_detectors_1.pdf
hsag.physik.uni-bonn.de/docs/lectures/.../chap_03_detectors_1.pdf

According to Tsoulfanidis, the, production of a scintillation is the result of the occurrence of

these events:
1. Ionizing radiation passes through the crystal.
2. Electrons are raised to the conduction band.
3. Holes are created in the valence band.
4. Excitons are formed.
5. Activation centers are raised to the excited states by absorbing electrons,
holes, and excitons.
6. Deexcitation is followed by the emission of a photon.

Semiconductors

According to Modern Physics by Taylor, et.al., here is another way of

understanding why donor states lie just below
the conduction band and acceptor states lie just above the valence band.
Consider a valence 5 donor impurity, surrounded by four complete covalent
bonds, and now ask what happens when we add the fifth electron. Suppose,
for just a moment, that instead of a +5 impurity, the site contained an ordinary
+4 Si ion. Then the extra electron would go into the lowest available
electronic state of a pure Si lattice, namely, a state at the bottom of the conduction band. However, instead of a +4 Si, the site contains a +5 impurity, so
3

the extra electron is a little more strongly bound by the Coulomb attraction
of the extra charge. This lowers the energy of the state below the bottom of
the conduction band.
We can repeat the argument for a trivalent acceptor site. Consider a valence 3
acceptor impurity, surrounded by four completed covalent bonds. An extra electron
is required to complete the last bond. We. now remove the extra electron and ask,
"What is the energy of the resulting hole state?" If instead of a+3 impurity, there
was a +4 Si at the site, then we would simply have a pure Si lattice with one
missing electron; the lowest energy state of such a system has a hole at the top of
the valence band. However, the site has a +3 impurity, lot a +4 Si, so the binding
energy of the extra electron is less. The energy of the state is thus a little higher
than expected and is raised above the top of the valence band.
Very small concentrations of impurities have a large effect on the carrier concentration in semiconductors. At room temperature and above, each
lonor impurity adds a conduction electron and each acceptor impurity adds a
ralence hole. Because the thermally activated carrier concentration in intrinsic semiconductors is very small, even low concentrations of impurities can
lave a huge effect. For instance, adding just one donor impurity for every
million Si atoms increases the room-temperature concentration of mobile
charge carriers by a factor of 106, from the intrinsic value of lO^rrT3 to
1022 mT3. Furthermore, the relatively large concentration of conduction electrons in n-type semiconductors greatly suppresses the concentration of holes
because the electrons drop down into the valence band and fill the holes.
Likewise, the large concentration of holes in p-type semiconductors greatly
iBppresses the conduction electron concentration. Thus, impurity doping contols both the concentration and type of charge carriers. The suppression of
a-called minority carriers holes in /z-type and electrons in p-type and
he dominance of the majority carriers electrons in n-type, holes in p-type
-play an important role in the behavior of semiconductor devices, as we will
ee in the following sections.
Because of the extreme sensitivity of semiconductor properties to imlurity levels, the manufacture of semiconductor devices must begin with the
iroduction of exceedingly pure single crystals of silicon. Impurity levels must
tart below 1 part in 1010, so that donors or acceptors can then be added in a
ontrolled manner (see Problem 14.12). This level of sample purity was pracically unknown prior to the ris^of the semiconductor industry, and special
iiirification techniques had to be developed to produce the necessary semionductor purity.