Excitons in scintillator materials: Optical properties and electron-energy loss spectra of NaI, LaBr3, BaI2, and SrI2. Issue 1 (3rd November 2016)

• Record Type: Journal Article
• Authors: Schleife, André; Zhang, Xiao; Li, Qi; Erhart, Paul; Åberg, Daniel
• Is Part Of: Journal of materials research. Volume 32:Issue 1(2017)
• Page Start: 56
• Page End: 63
• Publication Date: 2016-11-03
• Subjects: electronic structure, -- optical properties, -- electron energy loss spectroscopy (EELS)NiAl; Materials -- Research -- Periodicals; 620.1105
• DOI: 10.1557/jmr.2016.395
• Languages: English
• ISSNs: 0884-2914

Abstract

Abstract: Abstract : Materials for scintillator radiation detectors need to fulfill a diverse set of requirements such as radiation hardness and highly specific response to incoming radiation, rendering them a target of current materials design efforts. Even though they are amenable to cutting-edge theoretical spectroscopy techniques, surprisingly many fundamental properties of scintillator materials are still unknown or not well explored. In this work, we use first-principles approaches to thoroughly study the optical properties of four scintillator materials: NaI, LaBr3, BaI2, and SrI2 . By solving the Bethe–Salpeter equation for the optical polarization function we study the influence of excitonic effects on dielectric and electron-energy loss functions. This work sheds light into fundamental optical properties of these four scintillator materials and lays the ground-work for future work that is geared toward accurate modeling and computational materials design of advanced radiation detectors with unprecedented energy resolution.