Luminescent properties of Ce3+ doped LiLuP4O12 tetraphosphate under synchrotron radiation excitation

Abstract

Abstract The work is dedicated to the investigation of the luminescent and scintillation properties of the LiLuP4O12:Ce tetraphosphate, as a new scintillation material. The LiLuP4O12:Ce polycrystalline samples were grown by the Micropulling down (MPD) method. Under e-beam excitation and excitation with energy above the band gap of host, the LiLuP4O12:Ce crystals possess very strong Ce3+ luminescence in the UV range in the bands peaked at 334 and 355 nm with a lifetime of 23 ns at room temperature. We have found that the scintillation light yield (LY) of polished plates prepared from MPD grown LiLuP4O12:Ce samples is relatively high and comparable with the LY of reference BGO crystal. Future improvement of the scintillation LY is expected at the optimization of the growth conditions of this compound. The energy structure of Ce3+ ions, related to the 4f-5d transitions of Ce3+ ions in the 3.7–25 eV range, was determined from the excitation and emission spectra of LiLuP4O12:Ce crystal under excitation by synchrotron radiation. We have also determined the energy of creation of excitons bound with Ce3+ ions and estimated the energy gap in LiLuP4O12 host, which is equal to 8.5 and > 9.0 eV, respectively.