Optical characterization of lithium fluoride thin-film imaging detectors for monochromatic hard X-rays

Abstract Lithium fluoride (LiF) crystals and thin films have been successfully investigated as X-ray imaging detectors based on optical reading of visible photoluminescence emitted by stable radiation-induced F 2 3 + colour centres. In this work, the response optically-transparent LiF film three different thicknesses, grown thermal evaporation Si(100) substrates irradiated with monochromatic 7 keV X-rays at several doses in range between 13 4.5× 10 Gy, was carefully fluorescence microscopy. For all linearly depends irradiation dose range. The lowest detected dose, delivered to thinnest film, only 0.5 ?m thick, is estimated Gy. Edge-enhancement experiments, conducted irradiating same energy placing an Au mesh front them a distance 15 mm, allowed estimating spatial resolution (0.38 ± 0.05) ?m, which comparable microscope one. This very high radiation centres combined availability wide field view large areas.