Applicability of barium fluoride and cadmium tungstate scintillators for well logging

The authors discuss the fundamental properties of barium fluoride and cadmium tungstate, with particular attention to properties relevant to nuclear well logging applications and their temperature dependence. Both detectors have properties that would seem to make them useful for specific logging measurements. However, other properties limit their usefulness. For example, barium fluoride has a fast emission output that lends itself to high counting rates, but the intensity of this emission is very weak and is at a wavelength that is not efficiently detected by common logging photomultipliers. Cadmium tungstate´s high density and atomic number give it excellent detection efficiency, but its applications in well logging are limited by its long scintillation decay constant