Low Stress Growth of Barium Bromine Iodide Scintillators

The recent discovery of Eu activated alkali-earth halide scintillators promises to revolutionize
remote detection and identification of radioisotopes. This proposal addresses the development
of methods for production of large-volume, high-quality Barium Bromine Iodide scintillators.
High-quality, low-cost scintillators for detection of gamma-rays are needed for monitoring
of nuclear non-proliferation and homeland security. The same scintillators can be used to
significantly improve the performance and lower the cost of applications involving X-ray
detection in nuclear medicine imaging and diagnostics , X-ray detectors for non-destructive
testing, and environmental contamination monitoring.
The work proposed here promises to result in production of scintillators for government
and commercial applications with much higher performance and at much lower cost than
currently available.