Scintillating glass‐ceramic substrates for indirect flat panel detectors in digital radiography

Scintillating glass‐ceramic substrates for indirect flat panel detectors in digital radiography

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...

Full description

Saved in:
Bibliographic Details
Published in:Journal of the American Ceramic Society Vol. 103; no. 12; pp. 6893 - 6900
Main Authors: Leonard, Russell L., Berkowitz, Danielle T., Thomas, Austin, Howansky, Adrian, Lubinsky, Anthony R., Johnson, Jacqueline A.
Format: Journal Article
Language:English
Published: Columbus Wiley Subscription Services, Inc 01-12-2020
Subjects:
Attenuation
Barium chloride
Detectors
digital radiography
Gadolinium
Glass ceramics
Glass substrates
oxyhalide glasses
Photodiodes
Radiography
scintillation
Scintillation counters
Semiconductor devices
Terbium
Thin film transistors
X rays
Online Access:Get full text
Tags: Add Tag
No Tags, Be the first to tag this record!
Description
Summary: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.
ISSN:0002-7820
1551-2916
DOI:10.1111/jace.17408