Characterization of strontium iodide scintillators with silicon photomultipliers

This work characterizes a commercially available europium-doped strontium iodide detector recently developed by Radiation Monitoring Devices (RMD). The detector has been chosen for a space-based mission scheduled to launch in early 2017. The primary goal of this work was to characterize the detector׳s response over the expected operational range of −10 °C to 30 °C as well as the expected operational voltage range of +26.5-+28.5 V and identify background interferences that may develop due to neutron activation produced by cosmic-ray interactions. The 8 mm×8 mm×20 mm detectors use KETEK silicon photomultipliers (SiPM), with an active area of 6 mmx6 mm (KETEK PM6660). Our results show substantial integral nonlinearity due to the SiPM ranging from 0% to 25% at room temperature over the energy range of 80-2614 keV. The nonlinearity, a function of temperature and overvoltage, leads to an underestimate of the full width at half max (FWHM), which is 2.6% uncorrected at 662 keV and 3.8% corrected at 662 keV. The temperature dependence of the detector results in a noise threshold that increases substantially above 30 °C due to the SiPM dark rate. In an effort to simulate the harsh environment of space, neutron activation of the detector was also explored. Gamma-ray lines at 127 keV and 164 keV were observed in the detector along with Kα x-rays associated with europium. Beta decay from europium- and iodine-activation products were also observed within the detector.