The research history and present situation of some halide scintillation crystals

Several hundreds of scintillation crystals have been discovered since the first synthetic scintillation crystal was recognized seventy years ago. Of all inorganic scintillators, about half of them are halide crystals. A few of them have been applied as radiation detection materials and are playing important roles in nuclear medicine, high energy physical experiments, security inspection and so on, but most of them are on the way of research and development. In order to deepen our understanding on the halide scintillation crystals, the development history and present situation of some important scintillation crystals are reviewed in this article. The crystal structure, crystalline behavior, scintillation properties as well as their recent progress are reviewed. Especially, the improvements on the scintillation properties of the crystals are summarized, problems existing in some crystals are analyzed and the possible application prospects are pointed out in this paper.