Single-crystal CeCl3(CH3OH)4: A new metal-organic cerium chloride methanol adduct for scintillator applications

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.

New cerium-based metal–organic scintillators for radiation detection

“…1. Single-crystal X-ray structural refinements yielded a formula unit of [(CeBr 3 ) 7 (1-PropOH) 18 ] Á (1-PropOH) 2 . The relatively complex molecular structure of this material, as viewed along two different crystallographic axes, is shown in Fig.…”

“…The solution growth procedures described in detail in Refs. [1,6] were utilized resulting in the growth of single crystals with the composition [(CeCl 3 ) 7 (1-PropOH) 16 2 ]. The relatively complex crystal structure of this compound is illustrated in Fig.…”

“…An X-ray refinement of the crystal structure resulted in the determination of the formula unit [(CeCl 3 ) 7 (n-BuOH) 16 (H 2 O) 2 ] Á (n-BuOH) 2 and in the structure illustrated in Fig. 11 [6].…”

“…The initial discovery of the cerium-based metal-organic coordination complex CeCl 3 (CH 3 OH) 4 [1,2] and its accompanying identification as a single crystal scintillator for the detection of both gamma rays and fast neutrons [1,3], has led to the subsequent identification of a number of other Ce 3 þ -activated metal-organic scintillators [4]-including scintillating materials that are produced by reactions between mixed rare-earth halides and methanol [5] (other new nonscintillating rare-earth metal-organic compounds have been discovered as well [6]). The prior results, combined with the development of the new rare-earth metal-organic scintillators described here, show that compounds of this type, in fact, represent a whole new class of scintillating materials with a relatively large number of members [6,7].…”

“…Pulse height spectrum of [(CeCl 3 ) 7 (1-PropOH) 16 (H 2 O) 2 ] Á (1-PropOH)2 showing the photopeak due to alpha particles from an 241 Am excitation source.…”