Study on crystal growth and scintillation characteristics of Cs₂ LiCeCl₆

In this work, we present the crystal growth and scintillation properties of our newly developed scintillation crystal, Cs₂ LiCeCl₆, for a γ-ray spectroscopy. This scintillation crystal is grown by using the vertical Bridgman method. The crystal of this material belongs to the elpasolite family characterized by a cubic structure and potentially can be easily grown in large volumes. Under the X-ray excitation, cerium emission band is observed to peak at 385 nm and 405 nm. An energy resolution (full width at half maximum over the peak position) of 5.5 % was observed for the 662 keV full absorption peak. We measured an absolute light yield of 22 000 photons/MeV of absorbed γ-ray energy. The crystal shows three main scintillation decay time components of 101 ns (42%), 557 ns (35%) and 2.9 μs (23%). This material is highly hygroscopic and special attention was paid during data taking and handling processes. We believe that the Cs₂ LiCeCl₆ crystal can be a promising material for medical imaging and radiation detection. Moreover due to the presence of Li ions, this scintillation crystal can also be a possible candidate for thermal neutron detection.