Perpendicular photonic crystal slabs integrated in metascintillators

Metascintillators have shown their advantages in achieving superior timing in Time-of-flight PET by combining different scintillation materials providing both fast emission and high stopping power. In this work, we try to further improve their timing performance by integrating thin-layer two-dimensional photonic crystal devices into the detector. This kind of nano-photonic devices, named after photonic crystal slabs, inserted between different scintillation material layers of a metascintillator are expected to first couple the energy of optical photons isotropically radiated out-of-plane into its in-plane propagating modes. Then the energy is guided with directivity toward photon detection surfaces. We demonstrate that photonic crystal slabs tailored for metascintillators have the potential to improve light collection efficiency and also reduce light transport time.