Growth and scintillation properties of Yb doped aluminate, vanadate and silicate single crystals

Abstract

For the purpose of quick screening for charge transfer (CT) transitions of Yb 3+ in various hosts, (Lu 1-x Yb x ) 3 Al 5 O 12 (Yb:LuAG) with x = 0.05, 0.15, 0.30 and (Y 1-x Yb x )AlO 3 (Yb:YAP) with x = 0.05, 0.10, 0.30 were grown by the micro-pulling-down method. (Y,Yb)VO 4 with strong wetting was grown by edge defined film-fed growth method and materials, which require moderate temperature gradient, such as Ca 8 (La,Yb) 2 (PO 4 ) 6 O 2 and (Gd,Yb) 2 SiO 5 were grown by Czochralski method. Strong dependence of the CT luminescence decay time and intensity on temperature was observed for Yb-doped LuAG and YAP. Super fast decay with 0.85 ns decay time was observed in Yb(30%) doped YAP at room temperature. Though the emission intensity is weak at room temperature, it exceeds several times that of PbWO 4 . In addition, CT luminescence of Yb:YAP occurs at longer wavelength than in BaF 2 , which enables the usage of glass-based photomultiplier for the detection. In addition, higher stopping power will be expected due to the higher density host compared with BaF 2 .