Characterization of the new scintillator Cs2LiYCl6:Ce3+

The first domestic inorganic scintillator, Cs2LiYCl6:Ce3+ (CLYC), was grown at Beijing Glass Research Institute using the vertical Bridgman method. In this work, we evaluated the performance of this new CLYC crystal in terms of its gamma-ray energy resolution and pulse shape discrimination (PSD) capability between neutrons and gamma rays. The decay times associated with different scintillation mechanisms were obtained by fitting decay functions to the neutron and gamma-ray waveform structures. We found an energy resolution of ~ 4.5% for 662-keV gamma rays and efficient neutron/gamma PSD with a figure of merit of ~ 2.6. Under gamma-ray excitation, there is an ultrafast scintillation mechanism in CLYC with a decay time of approximately 2 ns, whereas there is no evidence of ultrafast decay under thermal neutron excitation. This work contributes to the promotion of domestic development of CLYC.