Scintillator

Scintillation crystal surrounded by various scintillation detector assemblies
Extruded plastic scintillator material fluorescing under a UV inspection lamp at Fermilab for the MINERνA project
Various scintillation crystals. The second crystal from the left is targeted by an UV source and shines brightly in visible light.

A scintillator (/ˈsɪntɪleɪtər/ SIN-til-ay-ter) is a material that exhibits scintillation, the property of luminescence,[1] when excited by ionizing radiation. Luminescent materials, when struck by an incoming particle, absorb its energy and scintillate (i.e. re-emit the absorbed energy in the form of light).[a] Sometimes, the excited state is metastable, so the relaxation back down from the excited state to lower states is delayed (necessitating anywhere from a few nanoseconds to hours depending on the material). The process then corresponds to one of two phenomena: delayed fluorescence or phosphorescence. The correspondence depends on the type of transition and hence the wavelength of the emitted optical photon.

  1. ^ Leo 1994, p. 158.


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