Fast and high light yield scintillation in the Ga₂O₃ semiconductor material

Abstract

We report the distinct scintillation properties of the well-known Ga2O3 semiconductor material. Under UV excitation, the photoluminescence (PL) emission peak appeared near a wavelength of 380 nm with a quantum yield of 6%, and fast decays of 8 and 793 ns were observed. In contrast, the X-ray-induced scintillation spectrum showed an intense emission band near a wavelength of 380 nm, whose decay curve was reproduced using two exponential decay components with time constants of 8 and 977 ns. The pulse height spectrum of 137Cs γ-rays measured using Ga2O3 showed a clear photoabsorption peak with a light yield of 15000 ± 1500 photons/MeV.

A Review on X-ray Excited Emission Decay Dynamics in Inorganic Scintillator Materials

“…The emission profile under ultraviolet excitation and X-ray excitation was basically the same, concluding the existence of similar decay channels. Yanagida and coworkers [81] report the scintillation properties of β-Ga2O3 as shown in Figure 7b,d. The emission band is mainly composed of two peaks in the UV and blue ranges.…”

Halide perovskites scintillators: unique promise and current limitations

“…CsPbBr 3 nanocrystal scintillators demonstrated a short decay time of 44.6 ns under gamma excitation. 38 The same material displayed a 5 ns decay time upon UV excitation, with the faster decay potentially due to avoiding the additional excitation and cascade steps in RL, 79 combined with the shorter penetration depth of UV compared to X-rays exciting the surface. The decay time shortened to 3 ns once combined in a Cs 4 PbBr 6 matrix, attributed to additional confinement accelerating recombination.…”

“…It has been reported that the decay time measured from RL excitation is slower, due to the additional excitation and cascade steps. 79 …”

Inorganic scintillating materials and scintillation detectors

“…44) Scintillation due to free exciton is characterized by fast scintillation decay with a sharp emission peak in the spectrum. Recently, I found a newly developed semiconductor material, Ga 2 O 3 , which also shows fast and very intense scintillation upon γ-ray irradiation, 45) although it is under discussion whether the emission is like that of a direct transition semiconductor or not. Among the semiconductor scintillators developed so far, Ga 2 O 3 has been confirmed to show the highest scintillation light yield, and we continue to study this scintillator.…”