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Scintillating glass‐ceramic substrates for indirect flat panel detectors in digital radiography
Author(s) -
Leonard Russell L.,
Berkowitz Danielle T.,
Thomas Austin,
Howansky Adrian,
Lubinsky Anthony R.,
Johnson Jacqueline A.
Publication year - 2020
Publication title -
journal of the american ceramic society
Language(s) - English
Resource type - Journals
SCImago Journal Rank - 0.9
H-Index - 196
eISSN - 1551-2916
pISSN - 0002-7820
DOI - 10.1111/jace.17408
Subject(s) - scintillator , materials science , terbium , scintillation , ceramic , flat panel detector , digital radiography , optoelectronics , glass ceramic , phosphor , optics , flat panel , luminescence , detector , radiography , composite material , physics , nuclear physics
Indirect flat panel detectors (I‐FPDs) enable digital radiography at high X‐ray energies. However, the performance of these devices is limited due to the large number of X rays that pass through them undetected. The authors hypothesize that a glass‐based scintillator may serve as a substrate for the thin film transistors and photodiodes in an I‐FPD, leading to improvements in X‐ray detection for improved performance. The authors synthesized a series of five glass‐ceramic scintillators based on an oxyhalide glass matrix. Each glass ceramic contains barium chloride crystals which serve as scattering centers to prevent “light trapping” in the material; barium chloride is also a well‐known scintillation crystal. Four of the samples contain trivalent terbium, which serves as a second luminescent center. The light output of each sample was compared against a well‐known X‐ray scintillator, gadolinium oxysulfide (GOS) under RQA9 exposure conditions, in the back‐irradiation configuration. The addition of terbium oxide to the glass composition increases the detected light output, which varies by concentration. The thickness of the glass‐ceramic scintillator has a profound effect on performance, with the results influenced by such factors as self‐attenuation of emission in the thicker samples and decreased X‐ray capture in the thinner samples. The brightest sample tested achieved a light output 13% that of the GOS intensifier screen. The results indicate that the use of scintillating glass‐ceramic substrates should lead to increased performance in indirect digital radiography.