Scintillation characteristics of LiCaAlF6-based single crystals under X-ray excitation

Abstract

LiCaAlF6-based scintillators are studied under X- and soft gamma-ray excitations. Under nanosecond pulsed soft X-ray laser excitation the scintillation decay is measured with extremely high dynamical resolution and broad time scale. The undoped LiCaAlF6 shows complex temperature dependence of exciton luminescence and tunneling-driven energy transfer process in scintillation decay. In both the Ce and Eu-doped LiCaAlF6 the dominant part of measured scintillation decay is due to prompt recombination of electrons and holes at the doped emission centers. Nevertheless, the measured light yield value is considerably lower with respect to the derived upper limits. Possible origin of its deterioration is discussed.

Rare-Earth Tantalates and Niobates Single Crystals: Promising Scintillators and Laser Materials

“…In recent years there has been renewed interest in developing new scintillator materials characterized by high light yield, fast response, and high density [20][21][22][23]. Scintillators with high density and high atomic number are mostly desirable, because high stopping power can reduce the needed amount of scintillator materials and, thus, reduce the volume of the detector.…”

Luminescence in LiCaAlF6:Eu,La phosphor

“…Applications in vacuum ultraviolet [1][2][3][4] (VUV) and lasers [5][6][7][8] are well known. Apart from these applications, the interest in this material arises from a variety of luminescence phenomena such as photoluminescence (PL) including photon cascade emission [9], radioluminescence [10][11][12][13] including scintillation [14], thermoluminescence [15,16] (TL) and optically stimulated luminescence [17][18][19] (OSL) it exhibits, and the associated applications. LiCaAlF 6 :Eu is useful as a neutron scintillator.…”

Czochralski Growth and Properties of Scintillating Crystals

“…12. Radio-luminescence spectra of the Ce-and Eu-doped LiCAF compared with the BGO standard scintillator, see also [62]. Spectra can be compared in an absolute scale.…”

“…and has been chosen to include two excited state levels or one excited state and one shallow trap levels given by exponential terms, and an additional tunneling and/or other recombination process coming from the transfer stage of scintillation mechanism given by the inverse power term, see [62] for further details. Leading exponential decay components with decay times of 34.…”