Often taken for granted or misunderstood, the scintillator is a fundamental component of your microscope. We have been manufacturing and recoating the finest in scintillators since 1972. Signal-to-noise ratio, brightness, and longevity are the most critical measures of scintillator quality. At one time, response time was considered an issue but today virtually all commercially available scintillators have adequate response time for a SEM (less than 100 ns.) Basically scintillators are phosphor on a substrate. The smoothness of the surface and the conductivity determines the signal-to-noise ratio. When, new, almost any SEM scintillator will give sufficient brightness to obtain adequate images, however, different types of scintillators lose their brightness at different rates. We offer P47P (P47 phosphor powder on quartz), and YAP:Ce scintillators. Crystalline scintillators like YAP:Ce last the longest (if contamination is minimal) however, they are not always the brightest. P47P scintillators are brighter and offer superior optical qualities to glass type P47 scintillators (the industry standard) or our old P47S type. The overall performance of P47P as measured by brightness, cost and match to PMT range and sensitivity make it the scintillator of choice for most applications. Plastic scintillators have the shortest life. All scintillators have a shortened life with surface contamination from the SEM. A few can be factory cleaned like our YAP:Ce. Custom scintillators including YAG:Ce and special phosphors are available.
