Investigation of gamma-ray sensitivity of YAG:Ce based scintillation structures

Ionizing radiation is widely used nowadays for diagnosing and probing a wide range of objects due to the high reliability and quality of the results obtained in such research. Use of highly sensitive ionizing radiation sensors enables the reduction of the radiation dose involved in the research. Moreover, sensitive systems for monitoring environmental parameters may be also created based on such sensors. In this work, the efficiency of a low density radiation detector with the composite scintillation structure based on powdery YAG:Ce phosphor as the converting coating of photosensitive detector was investigated. The possibility to detect gamma radiation from the²⁴¹ Am and¹³⁷Cs based sources by the ionizing radiation detector comprising YAG:Ce³⁺composite converting scintillation structure and micropixel avalanche photodiode (MAPD) was found. The number of detected gamma rays emitted by the²⁴¹ Am source was shown to increase linearly with the thickness of the composite converting scintillation structure. The thickness of the composite converting scintillation structure of 495 µm was found to enable registration of gamma-rays with the energies in the range of 26 to 662 keV.