skip to main content
OSTI.GOV title logo U.S. Department of Energy
Office of Scientific and Technical Information

Title: Auger recombination in sodium-iodide scintillators from first principles

Journal Article · · Applied Physics Letters
DOI:https://doi.org/10.1063/1.4914500· OSTI ID:22398840
 [1];  [2];  [3];  [4]
  1. Applied Physics Program, University of Michigan, Ann Arbor, Michigan 48109 (United States)
  2. Physical and Life Sciences Directorate, Lawrence Livermore National Laboratory, Livermore, California 94550 (United States)
  3. Department of Materials Science and Engineering, University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign, Urbana, Illinois 61801 (United States)
  4. Department of Materials Science and Engineering, University of Michigan, Ann Arbor, Michigan 48109 (United States)

Scintillator radiation detectors suffer from low energy resolution that has been attributed to non-linear light yield response to the energy of the incident gamma rays. Auger recombination is a key non-radiative recombination channel that scales with the third power of the excitation density and may play a role in the non-proportionality problem of scintillators. In this work, we study direct and phonon-assisted Auger recombination in NaI using first-principles calculations. Our results show that phonon-assisted Auger recombination, mediated primarily by short-range phonon scattering, dominates at room temperature. We discuss our findings in light of the much larger values obtained by numerical fits to z-scan experiments.

OSTI ID:
22398840
Journal Information:
Applied Physics Letters, Vol. 106, Issue 14; Other Information: (c) 2015 AIP Publishing LLC; Country of input: International Atomic Energy Agency (IAEA); ISSN 0003-6951
Country of Publication:
United States
Language:
English