The recent developments in the technology of scintillator detectors for gamma-ray spectroscopy

The goal of this report is to review the recent developments in the use of high stopping power materials and solid state readout for scintillation gamma -ray spectroscopy as these techniques may give rise to a new generation of low powered portable instruments. The report is a bibliographical study based on papers published mainly these last five years. The main subject is preceded by a general introduction in which the principal characteristics of a scintillator gamma-ray spectrometer are discussed. The properties of some scintillator materials (NaI(T1), CsI(T1), CsI(Na), BGO, GSO(Ce) and CdWO4) are then briefly presented. In this section, a special emphasis has been given to BGO as this material has recently received much attention and is now well documented. Finally, the results obtained by measuring the intensity of the light generated in the crystal with three types of solid-state photodetectors (Si photodiodes, HgI2 photodetectors and avalanche Si photodiodes) are summarized