Inorganic scintillators are usually crystals grown in high temperature furnaces, for example, alkali metal halides, often with a small amount of activator impurity. The most widely used is  (thallium-doped sodium iodide); its scintillation light is blue. Other inorganic alkali halide crystals are: , , Caesium iodide|(pure), Caesium fluoride|, potassium iodide|, lithium iodide|. Some non-alkali crystals include: BGO, barium fluoride|, calcium fluoride|, zinc sulfide|, calcium tungstate|, Cadmium tungstate|, Yttrium aluminium garnet| (), gadolinium oxyorthosilicate|, lutetium orthosilicate|. (For more examples, see also phosphors).
Newly developed products include , lanthanum chloride doped with cerium, as well as a cerium-doped lanthanum bromide, . They are both very hygroscopic (i.e., damaged when exposed to moisture in the air) but offer excellent light output and energy resolution (63 photons/keV γ for  versus 38 photons/keV γ for ), a fast response (16 ns for  versus 230 ns for ), excellent linearity, and a very stable light output over a wide range of temperatures. In addition LaBr(Ce) offers a higher stopping power for γ rays (density of 5.08 g/cm versus 3.67 g/cm for ). LYSO () has an even higher density (7.1 g/cm, comparable to bismuth germanate|), is non-hygroscopic, and has a higher light output than  (32 photons/keV γ), in addition to being rather fast (41 ns decay time versus 300 ns for ).
A disadvantage of some inorganic crystals, e.g., NaI, is their hygroscopicity, a property which requires them to be housed in an airtight container to protect them from moisture.  and BaF are only slightly hygroscopic and do not usually need protection. CsF, , ,  are hygroscopic, while , , , and  are not.
Inorganic crystals can be cut to small sizes and arranged in an array configuration so as to provide position sensitivity. Such arrays are often used in medical physics or security applications to detect X-rays or γ rays: high-Z, high density materials (e.g. LYSO, BGO) are typically preferred for this type of applications.
Scintillation in inorganic crystals is typically slower than in organic ones, ranging typically from 1.48 ns for  to 9000 ns for . Exceptions are  (~5 ns), fast  (0.7 ns; the slow component is at 630 ns), as well as the newer products (, 28 ns; , 16 ns; , 41 ns).
For the imaging application, one of the advantage of inorganic crystals is very high light yield. Some high light yield scintillators above 100,000 photons/MeV at 662 keV are very recently reported for , , and .
Many semiconductor scintillator phosphors are known, such as ZnS(Ag) (mentioned in the history section), CdS(Ag), ZnO(Zn), ZnO(Ga), CdS(In), ZnSe(O), and ZnTe(O), but none of these are available as single crystals. CdS(Te) and ZnSe(Te) have been commercially available in single crystal form, but their luminosity is partially quenched at room temperature.
GaAs(Si,B) is a recently discovered cryogenic semiconductor scintillator with high light output in the infra-red and apparently no afterglow. In combination with ultra-low noise cryogenic photodetectors it is the target in experiments to detect rare, low-energy electronic excitations from interacting dark matter.