Pulse shape discrimination study with Tl2ZrCl6 crystal scintillator

Highlights: • Good energy resolution is obtained under γ-rays excitation. • Excellent PSD is achieved for γ-rays and α-particles. • Highest FOM is obtained with Optimum filter method. • Tl₂ZrCl₆ can be promising for fast neutron detection due to excellent PSD. -- Abstract: Tl₂ZrCl₆ (TZC) crystal is an efficient scintillator for high energy γ-ray detection due to its high effective atomic number, high light yield and good energy resolution. This crystal with the dimension of diameter 10 mm and length 50 mm is grown from the melt by using vertical Bridgman technique. In this communication, we report on its pulse shape discrimination (PSD) capability for the signals induced by α-particles and γ-rays from ²⁴¹Am and ¹³⁷Cs sources, respectively. Three PSD methods including mean time, charge integration and optimum filter method have been employed and the results have been compared. The best figure-of-merits (FOM) is obtained to be 3.5 for optimum filter method. We expect that this scintillator will be a promising candidate for the fast neutron spectroscopy due to the high concentration of Cl. The energy resolution, decay time, quenching factor and pulse-height characteristics have been also measured for α- and γ-sources at room temperature.