Inorganic scintillators-a basic material for instrumentation in physics

Since more than 100 years inorganic scintillators provide an efficient signal for photon and particle detection up to the highest energies. The paper provides a short review on the application of the most common scintillator materials used in nuclear and high-energy physics. Based on the general requirements for energy and momentum measurement, as well as particle identification, typical examples of detector concepts and operated systems are presented.