Abstract
ABSTRACTWe are developing highly transparent ceramic oxide scintillators for high energy (MeV) radiography screens. Lutetium oxide doped with europium (Lu2O3:Eu) is the material of choice due to its high light yield and stopping power. As an alternative to hot-pressing, we are utilizing vacuum sintering followed by hot isostatic pressing (HIP). Nano-scale starting powder was uniaxially pressed into compacts and then sintered under high vacuum, followed by HIP’ing. Vacuum sintering temperature proved to be a critical parameter in order to obtain highly transparent Lu2O3:Eu. Under-sintering resulted in open porosity disabling the driving force for densification during HIP’ing, while over-sintering lead to trapped pores in the Lu2O3:Eu grain interiors. Optimal vacuum sintering conditions allowed the pores to remain mobile during the subsequent HIP’ing step which provided enough pressure to close the pores completely resulting in fully-dense highly transparent ceramics. Currently, we have produced 3 mm thick by 4.5 cm diameter ceramics with excellent transparency, and anticipate scaling to larger sizes while maintaining comparable optical properties.
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