Scintillator Single Crystals

A Scintillation material converts high-energy photons and ionizing radiations into visible photons. They are employed to detect X-ray and γ-ray photons as well as high-energy charged particles. These materials have the ability to detect the incoming radiations, count them, and in a few cases, give information about their energy and type. These stringent conditions cannot be fulfilled by any single material. Thus, different scintillator materials have been investigated and used in various applications ranging from homeland security to nuclear medicine and high-energy physics experiments. This chapter will give a broad introduction to the field of single crystal based scintillators, the theory of scintillation mechanism, and will also dwell on the current trends in scintillators which are developed for different applications.