Lawrence Berkeley National Laboratory

In this paper, we report on a relatively new cerium doped scintillator - LaCl3 for gamma ray spectroscopy. Crystals of this scintillator have been grown using Bridgman method. This material when doped with 10% cerium has high light output (~50,000 photons/MeV) and fast principal decay time constant (~20 ns). Furthermore, it shows excellent energy resolution for gamma ray detection. For example, energy resolution as low as 3.2% (FWHM) has been achieved with 662 keV photons (137Cs source) at room temperature. Also high timing resolution (264 ps - FWHM) has been recorded with LaCl3-PMT and BaF2-PMT detectors operating in coincidence using 511 keV positron annihilation gamma ray pairs. Details of crystal growth, scintillation properties, and variation of these properties with cerium concentration are also reported.