Application prospects of cadmium-containing crystals based on tungstates and double tungstates

Tungstate and double tungstate crystals of high scintillation efficiency and detectors based on them are applied widely in the medical imaging and radiation monitoring because of their high sensitivity to the ionizing radiation, small radiation length, high radiation hardness, low afterglow level. In this work a possibility to broaden the application field of CWO crystals have been investigated by improvement of their spectrometric quality and decreasing of their afterglow level. CWO crystals with improved characteristics have been obtained (resolution for 137Cs <8%, afterglow <0.02% after 20 ms). A possibility is considered to use these crystals for spectrometry of thermal and resonance neutrons, which is possible due to the presence of nuclei with large cross-section for these neutrons in the crystal lattice. Compounds of a new type based on Cd, La-containing double tungstates doped with rare earth elements have been synthesized, and their luminescent characteristics have been studied. Calculation and measurement results are presented for these crystals under thermal and resonance neutron activation. The results obtained show that such crystals are very promising for dosimetry and spectrometry of neutrons at thermal energies.