Role of hot electron transport in scintillators: A theoretical study

Abstract

Despite recent intensive study on scintillators, several fundamental questions on scintillator properties are still unknown. In this work, we use ab‐initio calculations to determine the energy dependent group velocity of the hot electrons from the electronic structures of several typical scintillators. Based on the calculated group velocities and optical phonon frequencies, a Monte‐Carlo simulation of hot electron transport in scintillators is carried out to calculate the thermalization time and diffusion range in selected scintillators. Our simulations provide physical insights on a recent trend of improved proportionality and light yield from mixed halide scintillators. (© 2016 WILEY‐VCH Verlag GmbH &Co. KGaA, Weinheim)

Needs, Trends, and Advances in Inorganic Scintillators

“…Thermalization stage is controlled by interaction of hot carriers with kinetic energy below the forbidden gap energy with phonons. Simple effective mass models are shown to be not applicable for the description of electron-phonon interaction and even for the prediction of group velocities of carriers with sufficient kinetic energy, so great attention was paid to the description of these properties in real crystals with complicated band structures [86], [182]- [184]. In general, effective mass approximation results in overestimation of the thermalization length in most crystals since group velocities and mobilities of hot carriers are overestimated.…”