Scintillation response of CaF2 to H and He over a continuous energy range

Recent demands for new radiation detector materials with improved γ-ray detection performance at room temperature have prompted research efforts on both accelerated material discovery and efficient techniques that can be used to identify material properties relevant to detector performance. New material discovery has been limited due to the difficulties of large crystal growth to completely absorb γ-energies; whereas high-quality thin films or small crystals of candidate materials can be readily produced by various modern growth techniques. In this work, an ion-scintillator technique is demonstrated that can be applied to study scintillation properties of thin films and small crystals. The scintillation response of a benchmark scintillator, europium-doped calcium fluoride (CaF2:Eu), to energetic proton and helium ions is studied using the ion-scintillator approach based on a time-of-flight (TOF) telescope. Excellent energy resolution and fast response of the TOF telescope allow quantitative measurement of light yield, nonlinearity and energy resolution over an energy range from a few tens to a few thousands of keV