Integrated Technology for Manufacturing Scintillation Ceramic Matrix Detectors for X-ray Imaging

The feasibility of producing planar ceramic scintillation detector elements comprising a substrate and square pixels has been demonstrated for the first time. Garnet-type materials (Gd,Y)3Al2Ga3O12:Mg and (Gd,Y)3Al2Ga3O12:Ce,Mg were used for the substrate and pixels, respectively. Green elements were successfully fabricated using a digital light processing (DLP) 3D printing method. Subsequent debinding process and pressureless high-temperature sintering yielded elements consisting of two layers of different chemical compositions. The lower bulk layer consisted of transparent non-luminescent garnet, while the upper pixelated layer with an element size of 230 × 230 µm was made of scintillation material. The response of the elements to alpha and beta radiation from isotope sources was studied. It has been shown that 500 ppm Mg concentration in the substrate suppresses the intrinsic scintillation of unactivated garnet by at least 18 times. This ensures a high contrast between the bulk substrate and the pixel emission. The spatial resolution-to-pixel size ratio was determined to be approximately 0.4. This value allows for the use of this technology in creating large-area planar detectors for X-ray imaging applications.