Most inorganic scintillators consist of transparent single crystals, whose dimensions range from a few millimetres to many centimetres. Some inorganics, such as silver-activated zinc sulfide, are good scintillators but cannot be grown in the form of optical-quality large crystals. As a result, their use is limited to thin polycrystalline layers known as phosphor screens.

The inorganic materials that produce the highest light output unfortunately have relatively long decay times. The most common inorganic scintillator is sodium iodide activated with a trace amount of thallium [NaI(Tl)], which has an unusually large light yield corresponding to a scintillation efficiency of about 13 percent. Its decay time is 0.23 microsecond, acceptable for many applications but uncomfortably long when extremely high counting rates or fast timing measurements are involved. The emission spectrum of NaI(Tl) is peaked at a wavelength corresponding to the blue region of the electromagnetic spectrum and is well matched to the spectral response of photomultiplier tubes. Thallium-activated cesium iodide [CsI(Tl)] also produces excellent light yield but has two relatively long decay components with decay times of 0.68 and 3.3 microseconds. Its emission spectrum is shifted toward the longer-wavelength end of the visible spectrum and is a better match to the spectral response of photodiodes. Both NaI(Tl) and CsI(Tl) have iodine, with an atomic number of 53, as a major constituent. Therefore the photoelectric cross section in these materials is large enough to make them attractive in gamma-ray spectroscopy. They are available economically in large sizes so that the corresponding gamma-ray intrinsic peak efficiency can be many times greater than that for the largest available germanium detector. Other inorganic scintillation materials are listed in the table. Some recently developed materials have much shorter decay times but, unfortunately, also lower light yields. These materials are useful for timing measurements but will have poorer energy resolution compared with the brighter materials.

Organic scintillators

A number of organic molecules with a so-called π-orbital electron structure exhibit prompt fluorescence following their excitation by the energy deposited by an ionizing particle. The basic mechanism of light emission does not depend on the physical state of the molecule; consequently, organic scintillators take many different forms. The earliest were pure crystals of anthracene or stilbene. More recently, organics are used primarily in the form of liquid solutions of an organic fluor (fluorescent molecule) in a solvent such as toluene, or as a plastic, in which the fluor is dissolved in a monomer that is subsequently polymerized. Frequently, a third component is added to liquid or plastic scintillators to act as a wave shifter, which absorbs the primary light from the organic fluor and re-radiates the energy at a longer wavelength more suitable for matching the response of photomultiplier tubes or photodiodes. Plastic scintillators are commercially available in sheets or cylinders with dimensions of several centimetres or as small-diameter scintillating fibres.

One of the most useful attributes of organic scintillators is their fast decay time. Many commercially available liquids or plastics have decay times of two to three nanoseconds, allowing their use in precise timing measurements. Organics tend to show a somewhat nonlinear yield of light as the deposited energy increases, and the light yield per unit energy deposited is significantly higher for low dE/dx particles such as electrons than for high dE/dx heavy charged particles. Even for electrons, however, the light yield is two to three times smaller than that of the best inorganic materials.

Because liquids and plastics can be made into detectors of flexible size and shape, they find many applications in the direct detection of charged particle radiations. They are seldom used to detect gamma rays because the low average atomic number of these materials inhibits the full energy absorption needed for spectroscopy. The average atomic number is not greatly different from that of tissue, however, and plastic scintillators have consequently found some useful applications in the measurement of gamma-ray doses. A unique application of liquid scintillators is in the counting of radioisotopes that emit low-energy beta particles, such as hydrogen-3 (³H) or carbon-14 (¹⁴C). As these low-energy beta particles have rather short ranges, they can be easily absorbed before reaching the active volume of a detector. This attenuation problem is completely avoided if the sample is dissolved directly in the liquid scintillator. In this case, the beta particles find themselves in the scintillator immediately after being emitted.

Cherenkov detectors

Cherenkov light is a consequence of the motion of a charged particle with a speed that is greater than the speed of light in the same medium. No particle can exceed the speed of light in a vacuum (c), but in materials with an index of refraction represented by n, the particle velocity v will be greater than the velocity of light if v > c/n. For materials with an index of refraction in the common range between 1.3 and 1.8, this velocity requirement corresponds to a minimum kinetic energy of many hundreds of MeV for heavy charged particles. Fast electrons with relatively small kinetic energy can reach this minimum velocity, however, and the application of the Cherenkov process to radiations with energy below 20 MeV is restricted to primary or secondary fast electrons.

Cherenkov light is emitted only during the time in which the particle is slowing down and therefore has very fast time characteristics. In contrast with the isotropically emitted scintillation light, Cherenkov light is emitted along the surface of a forward-directed cone centred on the particle velocity vector. The wavelength of the light is preferentially shifted toward the short-wavelength (blue) end of the spectrum. The total intensity of the Cherenkov light is much weaker than the light emitted from equivalent energy loss in a good scintillator and may be only a few hundred photons or less for a 1-MeV electron. Cherenkov detectors are normally used with the same type of light sensors employed in scintillation detectors.