Synthesis and characterization of Ce3+-doped barium-gadolinium-fluoroborate glasses for proton beam diagnostic

Abstract

By using a melt-quenching technique in an air atmosphere, barium-gadolinium-fluoroborate scintillating glasses with different concentrations of BaO and CeF3 were fabricated. The purpose of developing glasses is to be applied as proton or x-ray energy detectors for medical purposes. Physical and scintillating properties of the fabricated glasses were tested and analyzed, including glass density and spectroscopic properties such as transmittance, photoluminescence, x-ray absorption near edge structure, and x-ray-induced luminescence. Moreover, the glasses were impinged by a 70 MeV proton beam at the Proton Center of King Chulalongkorn Memorial Hospital to observe their proton-induced light emission. The absorption edge of the transmittance revealed that the glasses showed a redshift at high concentrations of BaO and CeF3. The glasses had a broad emission band centering around 400 nm due to the 5d–4f transition of Ce3+ induced by x-ray. The higher light yield was observed at a higher cerium compound glass. Our glass can clearly measure the depth-dose profile of the impinging proton beam by varying different water thicknesses. Moreover, the depth-dose profile results are in good agreement with that of the energy deposition of proton beams in glass calculated via GATE simulation.