New scintillation transparent ceramics Y₃Al_2.5Ga_2.5O₁₂:Ce, Mg has been produced and evaluated for the first time. The material possesses a density of 5.17 g/cm³, a highlight yield of 44,000 ph/MeV, and an effective scintillation kinetics decay constant of 47 ns. This unique combination of the parameters makes it superior to YAG:Ce. Production of the material does not include tooling from precious materials, and the rate of the crystalline mass production is not limited by the pulling rate of the crystal growth process. It can be quite prospective to upgrade the detection units of a variety of X-ray imaging devices. The mechanism of the scintillation light yield enhancement and kinetics shortening in the material are discussed as well.

Lightweight satellites, which monitor different kinds of ionizing radiation in the Earth's orbits, need lightweight detectors as well. For the first time, the detecting capabilities of new high light yield and fast scintillation materials of garnet structure, Gd3Al2.5Ga2.5O12:Ce,Mg (GAGG:Ce,Mg-HL) and Y3Al2.5Ga2.5O12:Ce,Mg (YAGG:Ce,Mg-HL), which were produced in the form of single crystals and ceramics, have been evaluated to construct miniature detectors of neutrons. Scintillators have a light yield over 45 000 ph/MeV; at that, Gd-less material has twice as short scintillation kinetics. Both achievements were obtained due to the combined variation in the Al/Ga ratio and Mg doping of the materials. When detecting thermal and epithermal neutrons, YAGG:Ce,Mg-HL will be used as a γ-ray monitor to extract background from the data acquired by GAGG:Ce,Mg-HL. Fast neutrons will produce an identical set of charged secondaries in the materials, which can be distinguished by the pulse shape discrimination method. This finding allows us to construct a miniature detector of neutrons to equip even nanosatellites to monitor space and the secondary neutrons.

Pixelated detectors based on inorganic scintillation materials are widely used in radiation detection systems for medical imaging and many other fields of science and technology. A substantial application is X-ray scanning using flat-panel detectors (FPDs) for both fluorography and mammography. In this article, the detection properties of the monolithic planar ceramic scintillation elements are reported for the first time. A high-light yield (Gd,Y)₃Al₂Ga₃O₁₂:Ce,Mg garnet-type scintillation material was used to form square-shaped pixels, while a material of similar composition was used as a substrate. Green bodies were successfully fabricated by a digital light processing (DLP) 3D printing method. Subsequent debinding and pressureless high-temperature sintering resulted in composite elements consisting of two layers with different chemical compositions. The lower bulk layer consisted of transparent, non-luminescent garnet, whereas the upper pixelated layer, with pixel dimensions of 230 × 230 µm, was made of scintillation material. The spatial resolution of the matrices under UV light and alpha-particle excitation was evaluated. It was confirmed that the spatial resolution of the matrices produced by the developed technology is approximately 0.4 times the pixel size. The proven ability of the integrated technology of inorganic scintillation matrix production opens the way for future improvement in spatial resolution through optimizing the printed pixel dimensions.