Measurement of ultimate tensile strength and Young modulus in LYSO scintillating crystals

Scintillating crystals are employed in high energy physics, in medical imaging, diagnostic and security. Two mechanical properties of lutetium–yttrium oxyorthosilicate cerium-doped Lu2(1−x)Y2xSiO5:Ce with x=0.1 (LYSO) crystals have been measured: the ultimate tensile stress (σUTS) and the Young elastic modulus (E). Measurements are made by means of a 4-points loading device and the experimental results account for an elastic–brittle stress–strain relation, which depends heavily on the specimen preparation and the material defects. σUTS along the [0 1 0] tensile direction ranges within 68.14 and 115.61 MPa, which, in the lowest case, is more than twice with respect to those measured for PbWO4 (PWO), exhibiting a marked difference between the annealed and the not-annealed samples. The mean elastic modulus (E), along the same direction, is E=1.80×1011 (±2.15×1010) N/m2, with lower dispersion respect to UTS data. This type of analysis and study can be included into quality control procedures of crystals, based on samples taken out of production; such procedures can be established for industrial processing of crystals aimed to the high energy physics (calorimeters) and medical imaging (PET, etc.) applications.