Scintillation and VUV-excited photoluminescence of europium-doped BaF2–Al2O3–B2O3 glasses

Abstract

We have investigated the X-ray induced luminescence (XRL) and the lifetime of a series of yEu2O3–50BaF2–xAl2O3–(50-x)B2O3 (x = 0–25, y = 1–10, in mol%) glasses, which exhibit high PL quantum yields (Shinozaki et al. in Opt Mater 36:1384, 2014), for potential scintillator applications. In addition, the effects of Al2O3 content and dopant concentrations of Eu3+ ions used for quenching were particularly focused. The XRL intensity of the 25Al2O3 glass was 76% of that for the 0Al2O3 glass. The lifetime increased with increasing the concentration of Al2O3, and the XRL lifetime was shorter than the PL lifetime. Concentration quenching was also observed, where the PL intensity increased with increasing the concentration of Eu2O3 below y = 10. In addition, the 3Eu2O3-doped glass exhibited the highest XRL intensity among the materials tested. The mechanism underlying this behavior was discussed in comparison with conventional PL and VUV-excited PL spectroscopies.