Crystal growth and scintillation properties of Lu substituted CeBr3 single crystals

We grew Lu-substituted CeBr3 [(Ce1−xLux)Br3] crystals by a modified micro-pulling-down method to increase the effective atomic number and to investigate effects of the Lu substitution on the crystal growth, phase generation, chemical composition, and optical and scintillation properties. The (Ce1−xLux)Br3 crystals with x=0 and 0.01 had high transparency while the milky parts were generated in the crystals with x=0.05 and 0.20. By the analysis of chemical composition, the estimated Zeff increased to 47.9. On the other hand, the light yields were systematically decreased and decay times were increased with increasing Lu concentration.