Luminescence and scintillation properties of Czochralski grown Pr3+ doped Li6Y(BO3)3 single crystal

Abstract

The Li6Y(BO3)3:Pr3+, an alkali orthoborate compound have been synthesized as polycrystalline powders with different doping concentration of Pr3+ rare-earth as an activator. The transparent single crystal has also been grown in argon atmosphere by the Czochralski method with 1 mol. % of Pr3+ doping element. The grown crystal possesses a monoclinic structure with a space group of P21/c. The crystal has been cut and optically polished to study the luminescence properties with X-ray, UV, α-particles, and γ-ray excitations. The crystal has showed relaxed 4f15d-4f2 emission at 309 nm along with characteristic 4f2-4f2 transition emissions. The UV–Vis–NIR absorbance spectrum has been obtained in the range of 250–2000 nm. Above 300 nm the crystal has showed about 50% transmittance. The Commission International De I'Eclairage (CIE) chromaticity diagram is depicting the change in combined emission colors for different excitation positions. The scintillation properties of the crystal have been studied with γ-ray from 60Co, α-particles from 241Am and moderated thermal neutrons from a252Cf source. The pulse shape discrimination, obtained for γ-ray, α-particles, and moderated thermal neutrons has shown the potential of this scintillator for thermal neutron detection.