We gratefully acknowledge the support of Adam C. Lindsey and the group of researchers at the Scintillation Materials Research Center, University of Tennessee, Knoxville. Adam approached us last December inquiring about our Quartz ampoules coated with high purity carbon. Similarly to some of our other customers, his team had tried to coat their own ampoules using the traditional method, but obtained limited success.
This past year, we supplied UTK with our coated ampoules. We recently received an email from Adam and he mentioned the following: The experiences with the carbon coated quartz are limited at this time, but preliminary results have consistently been promising in comparison with conventional uncoated quartz. Finding economical alternative surface coatings that provide improvements to the growth process are hard to come by and the craftsmanship at Sandfire Scientific is high quality, and delivered as specified. Our custom ampoule geometry and special requests have been handled professionally and in some cases, Sandfire even suggested improvements to our designs based upon their expertise. Our research has certainly benefitted from the enhancements provided by their coating process.
His feedback makes us feel warm and fuzzy inside, just like we imagine a crystal feels inside one of our ampoules. His research into the melt growth of KCaI3:Eu single crystals and other ternary halide based scintillation materials is targeted for potential use in domestic security applications and his findings will soon appear in a publication. He kindly sent us photographs of his scintillator crystals grown in our ampoules. As a sneak peak to the upcoming paper, we posted two pictures with his permission. Photographs © Adam Coleman Lindsey. We will write an update on Adam and his team’s research once they have published their results.
Our focus at Sandfire Scientific is to provide high quality ampoules, plain or carbon coated, to researchers such as Adam. Please do not hesitate to contact us for your fused silica ampoule needs. They will be custom-made to your specifications.