WFU Physics Colloquium

TITLE: Nonproportionality in scintillator materials: present understanding and future high-throughput materials design

SPEAKER: Dr. Wahyu Setyawan ,

TIME: Wednesday October 27, 2010 at 4:00 PM

PLACE: Room 101 Olin Physical Laboratory

Scintillators have been known for over a century. However, the quest for brighter materials having a high resolution continues. The resolution degrades significantly whenever the materials exhibits a nonproportional behavior between the number of produced lights and the deposited energy from the radiation. In this talk, we will learn about the nonproportionality in inorganic scintillators for gamma-ray detection. Progress in understanding this complex phenomenon will be presented. A new approach in studying the issue based on first principle electronic structure calculation reveals a correlation between nonproportionality and band masses. The finding prompts a high-throughput calculation of band structures for searching potential bright and proportional scintillators.