Optical and structural properties of Eu3+ doped MgO–Li2O–Na2O–BaO–B2O3 glasses for scintillating glass applications

Abstract

The glass systems with composition of 17MgO–10Li2O-(57-X) B2O3–6BaO–10Na2O-XEu2O3 (X = 0.0(BMLNBa), 0.1(BMLNBaEu0.1), 0.3(BMLNBaEu0.3), 0.5(BMLNBaEu0.5) and 1.0(BMLNBaEu1.0) mol% were prepared and studied their optical, structural properties for scintillating applications. Density and refractive index of the glasses increases with increase in Eu2O3 content indicating close packing of glass network. IR spectra reveal signature peaks of the borate network. Photoluminescence spectra of glass systems reveals emission bands which corresponds to 5D0 →7F0 (579 nm), 5D0 →7F1 (590 nm), 5D0→7F2 (615 nm), 5D0 →7F3 (654 nm), 5D0→7F4 (700 nm) transitions. The emission and excitation intensity depends on Eu3+ ions where emission wavelength was observed at 615 nm and excited wavelength at 394 nm. The highest emission intensity was observed for BMLNBaEu0.3 glass. Asymmetry ratio (IR/O) is calculated and compared with other glasses. The phonon side-band spectra are used to calculate phonon energy of the present glass system. Judd-Ofelt analysis and radiative properties have been evaluated for BMLNBaEu0.3 glass and compared with other glass compositions. Using phonon energy, the coupling strength ‘g’, host dependent parameters (α) and multi-phonon relaxation rates (WMPR/Wo) have been evaluated. Phonon coupling strength shows 0.0054, 0.0108 and 0.0546 for BMLNBaEu0.3, BMLNBaEu0.5 and BMLNBaEu1.0 glasses respectively. The results obtained indicate the glasses are potential candidates for the scintillating material applications.