Abstract
Inorganic scintillators are of great significance in the fields of medical CT, high-energy physics and industrial nondestructive testing. In this work, we confirm that the Pb(4)Lu(3)F(17): Re (Re = Tb, Eu, Sm, Dy, Ho) crystals are promising candidates for a new kind of scintillator. Detailed crystal structure information is obtained by the Rietveld refinement analysis. Upon X-ray irradiation, all these scintillators exhibited characteristic 4f-4f transitions. The Ce and Gd ions were verified to be useful for enhancing the scintillation intensity via introducing energy transfer processes. The integrated scintillation intensity of the Pb(4)Lu(3)F(17): Tb/Ce is about 16.8% of the commercial CsI (Tl) single crystal. Our results manifested that Pb(4)Lu(3)F(17): Re has potential application in X-ray detection and imaging.