Comparison of different Cs2LiYCl6:Ce crystals: Energy resolution and pulse shape dependences on temperature

Portable radiation detection systems will greatly benefit from the use of the same detector for gamma and neutrons, on the roadmap towards miniaturization, provided such devices are capable of robust discrimination of gammas against neutrons. One of the most promising and yet commercially available inorganic scintillator, delivering different pulse shapes for thermal neutrons and gammas is the Cs
₂
LiYCl
₆
:Ce (CLYC) [1,2]. The detection for thermal neutrons follows through the
⁶
Li(n,alpha)
³
H capture reaction, and with the appropriate levels of
⁶
Li enrichment, which have currently reached 95%, the CL YC crystals could become very efficient neutron detectors. In order to successfully integrate this new scintillator in our digital devices, the variability of the energy resolution across various crystals, the dependence of the energy resolution on energy, shaping time and temperature, the pulse shape parameters variability across the crystals and the thermal neutron sensitivity were investigated.