Scintillation (physics)
Encyclopedia
Scintillation is a flash of light
Light
Light or visible light is electromagnetic radiation that is visible to the human eye, and is responsible for the sense of sight. Visible light has wavelength in a range from about 380 nanometres to about 740 nm, with a frequency range of about 405 THz to 790 THz...

 produced in a transparent material by an ionization
Ionization
Ionization is the process of converting an atom or molecule into an ion by adding or removing charged particles such as electrons or other ions. This is often confused with dissociation. A substance may dissociate without necessarily producing ions. As an example, the molecules of table sugar...

 event. See scintillator
Scintillator
A scintillator is a special material, which exhibits scintillation—the property of luminescence when excited by ionizing radiation. Luminescent materials, when struck by an incoming particle, absorb its energy and scintillate, i.e., reemit the absorbed energy in the form of light...

 and scintillation counter
Scintillation counter
A scintillation counter measures ionizing radiation. The sensor, called a scintillator, consists of a transparent crystal, usually phosphor, plastic , or organic liquid that fluoresces when struck by ionizing radiation. A sensitive photomultiplier tube measures the light from the crystal...

 for practical applications.

Overview

The process of scintillation is one of luminescence
Luminescence
Luminescence is emission of light by a substance not resulting from heat; it is thus a form of cold body radiation. It can be caused by chemical reactions, electrical energy, subatomic motions, or stress on a crystal. This distinguishes luminescence from incandescence, which is light emitted by a...

 whereby light of a characteristic spectrum is emitted following the absorption of radiation. The emitted radiation is usually less energetic than that absorbed. Scintillation is an inherent molecular property in conjugated
Conjugated system
In chemistry, a conjugated system is a system of connected p-orbitals with delocalized electrons in compounds with alternating single and multiple bonds, which in general may lower the overall energy of the molecule and increase stability. Lone pairs, radicals or carbenium ions may be part of the...

 and aromatic
Aromaticity
In organic chemistry, Aromaticity is a chemical property in which a conjugated ring of unsaturated bonds, lone pairs, or empty orbitals exhibit a stabilization stronger than would be expected by the stabilization of conjugation alone. The earliest use of the term was in an article by August...

 organic molecules and arises from the electronic structure of said molecules. Scintillation also occurs in many inorganic materials, including salts, gases, and liquids.

Scintillation of Organic Scintillators

In organic molecules scintillation is a product of π-orbitals
Pi bond
In chemistry, pi bonds are covalent chemical bonds where two lobes of one involved atomic orbital overlap two lobes of the other involved atomic orbital...

. Organic materials form molecular crystals where the molecules are loosely bound by Van der Waals force
Van der Waals force
In physical chemistry, the van der Waals force , named after Dutch scientist Johannes Diderik van der Waals, is the sum of the attractive or repulsive forces between molecules other than those due to covalent bonds or to the electrostatic interaction of ions with one another or with neutral...

s. The ground state of 12C is 1s2 2s2 2p2. When carbon forms compounds, one of the 2s electrons is excited into the 2p state resulting in a configuration of 1s2 2s1 2p3. To describe the different valencies of carbon, the four valence electron orbitals, one 2s and three 2p, are considered to be mixed or hybridized in several alternative configurations. For example, in a tetrahedral configuration the s and p3 orbitals combine to produce four hybrid orbitals. In another configuration, known as trigonal configuration, one of the p-orbitals (say pz) remains unchanged and three hybrid orbitals are produced by mixing the s, px and py orbitals. The orbitals that are symmetrical about the bonding axes and plane of the molecule (sp2) are known as σ-electrons and the bonds are called σ-bonds. The pz orbital is called a π-orbital. A π-bond occurs when two π-orbitals interact. This occurs when their nodal planes are coplanar.

In certain organic molecules π-orbitals interact to produce a common nodal plane. These form delocalized π-electrons that can be excited by radiation. The de-excitation of the delocalized π-electrons results in luminescence.

The excited states of π-electron systems can be explained by the perimeter free-electron model (Platt 1949). This model is used for describing polycyclic hydrocarbons consisting of condensed systems of benzenoid rings in which no C atom belongs to more than two rings and every C atom is on the periphery.

The ring can be approximated as a circle with circumference l. The wave-function of the electron orbital must satisfy the condition of a plane rotator:



The corresponding solutions to the Schrödinger wave equation are:







,

where q is the orbital ring quantum number; the number of nodes of the wave-function. Since the electron can have spin up and spin down and can rotate about the circle in both directions all of the energy levels except the lowest are doubly degenerate.

The above shows the π-electronic energy levels of an organic molecule. Absorption of radiation is followed by molecular vibration to the S10 state. This is followed by a de-excitation to the S0 state called fluorescence. The population of triplet states is also possible by other means. The triplet states decay with a much longer decay time than singlet states, which results in what is called the slow component of the decay process (the fluorescence process is called the fast component). Depending on the particular energy loss of a certain particle (dE/dx), the "fast" and "slow" states are occupied in different proportions. The relative intensities in the light output of these states thus differs for different dE/dx. This property of scintillators allows for pulse shape discrimination: it is possible to identify which particle was detected by looking at the pulse shape. Of course, the difference in shape is visible in the trailing side of the pulse, since it's due to the decay of the excited states.
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