Optical and Scintillation Properties of Tb-Doped Rare-Earth Pyrosilicate Single Crystals
Prom Kantuptim,
Takumi Kato,
Daisuke Nakauchi,
Noriaki Kawaguchi,
Kenichi Watanabe,
Takayuki Yanagida
Affiliations
Prom Kantuptim
Division of Materials Science, Graduate School of Science and Technology, Nara Institute of Science and Technology, 8916-5 Takayama, Ikoma 630-0192, Nara, Japan
Takumi Kato
Division of Materials Science, Graduate School of Science and Technology, Nara Institute of Science and Technology, 8916-5 Takayama, Ikoma 630-0192, Nara, Japan
Daisuke Nakauchi
Division of Materials Science, Graduate School of Science and Technology, Nara Institute of Science and Technology, 8916-5 Takayama, Ikoma 630-0192, Nara, Japan
Noriaki Kawaguchi
Division of Materials Science, Graduate School of Science and Technology, Nara Institute of Science and Technology, 8916-5 Takayama, Ikoma 630-0192, Nara, Japan
Kenichi Watanabe
Department of Applied Quantum Physics and Nuclear Engineering, Faculty of Engineering, Kyushu University, 744 Motooka, Fukuoka 819-0395, Japan
Takayuki Yanagida
Division of Materials Science, Graduate School of Science and Technology, Nara Institute of Science and Technology, 8916-5 Takayama, Ikoma 630-0192, Nara, Japan
Series of 1.0% Terbium (Tb)-doped rare-earth pyrosilicate single crystals including Lu2Si2O7 (LPS), Y2Si2O7 (YPS), Gd2Si2O7 (GPS), and La2Si2O7 (LaPS) have been prepared by the floating-zone method. After the phase confirmation by powder X-ray diffraction, the properties are measured on both photoluminescence and scintillation aspects, including the photoluminescence emission contour graph and decay times, X-ray induced scintillation spectra and decay times, afterglow profiles, and the recently developed pulse height spectra for scintillators with millisecond decay time. The results indicate the multiple emissions from Tb3+ 4f-4f transition with the dominant emission at 540 nm (5D4 → 7F5) on both ultraviolet and X-ray excitation with the decay time around 2.6–5.6 and 1.3–3.2 ms, respectively. Under the γ-ray irradiation from 137Cs, the Tb-doped LPS, YPS, GPS, and LaPS have presented scintillation light yields of 20,700, 29,600, 95,600, and 47,700 ph/MeV with ±10%, respectively, which considerably very high among the oxide scintillators.
