Lawrence Berkeley National Laboratory

Scintillators based on Tl salts that provide high densities and high effective atomic numbers are currently being investigated for their possible use in radioisotope identification applications. Ce-doped Tl2LaCl5, in particular, has been the leading compound of those studied, showing good light output and energy resolution. The analogous Tl2CeCl5 has received much less attention, and the information known about it is rather incomplete. This paper focuses on the scintillation and optical properties of Tl2CeCl5 single crystals and compares them to those of Tl2LaCl5:Ce to better evaluate the effect of full substitution of La with Ce.