Radiation-to-light converters for nuclear environments: deep red emitters

This report gives the preliminary results on work done to find a scintillator that is compatible with high-bandwidth, long-distance fiber-optic transmission. The requirements for such a scintillator are: (1) emission in the near-IR; (2) linear output over 2 to 3 decades of input excitation; (3) time response < 2 ns; and (4) immunity to radiation damage. The behavior of single crystal cadmium sulfide (CdS) and cadmium selenide (CdSe) was examined under electron and laser excitation. Both crystals emit in the deep red, however, time response was found to be slower than 2 ns. Neither crystal exhibited good linearity over the entire range of input excitation