Characterisation of Cerium-Doped Lanthanum Bromide scintillation detector

Cerium-doped lanthanum Bromide LaBr3(Ce) crystals is one of the new scintillating detectors that has been developed in recent years which has proven to be superior to other scintillating materials in terms of resolution and efficiency. In this study we have carried out the characterisation of a 25mm X 25mm BrillanceTM380 LaBr3(Ce) detector through the laboratory measurement of its energy resolution, intrinsic photo-peak, total intrinsic, total absolute efficiency and timing resolution. In addition, the energy dependence of the resolution has been studied using a variety of gamma ray sources with variable energy in the range (122-1408keV). The study showed that LaBr3(Ce) detector has an excellent energy resolution of 2.6% full-width-at-half maximum (FWHM) at 662keV photons using a Caesium-137 (137Cs) source at room temperature as compared to NaI(Tl) detector. Also, it was determined that the detector has a full-energy peak efficiency ranging from 90.1% to 4.3% in the energy range of 122-1408keV and for a source-to-detector distance of 150mm.