Nonlinear Luminescence Response of CaF₂:Eu and YAlO₃:Ce to Single-Ion Excitation

Journal Article · Fri Jan 17 00:00:00 EST 2014 · Journal of Applied Physics

DOI:https://doi.org/10.1063/1.4861152· OSTI ID:1227061

Liu, Peng ^[1]; Zhang, Yanwen ^[2]; Xiao, Haiyan Y. ^[3]; Xiang, Xia ^[4]; Wang, Xuelin ^[5]; Weber, William J. ^[2]

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1. Univ. of Tennessee, Knoxville, TN (United States); Shandong Univ., Jinan (China)
2. Univ. of Tennessee, Knoxville, TN (United States); Oak Ridge National Lab. (ORNL), Oak Ridge, TN (United States)
3. Univ. of Tennessee, Knoxville, TN (United States)
4. Univ. of Electronic Science and Technology of China, Chengdu (China)
5. Shandong Univ., Jinan (China)

Understanding scintillation physics and nonproportionality is essential to accelerate materials discovery that has been restricted due to the difficulties inherent to large crystal growth and complex nature of gamma-solid interaction. Taking advantage of less restrictive growth and deposition techniques for smaller crystal sizes or thin films and better fundamental understanding of ion-solid interactions, a unique ion approach is demonstrated to effectively screen candidate scintillators with relatively small size and evaluate their nonlinear scintillation response. Response of CaF₂:Eu and YAlO₃:Ce scintillators to single ions of Hþ, Heþ, and O₃þ are measured by the corresponding pulse height over a continuous energy range using a time-of-flight–scintillator–photoelectric multiplier tube apparatus. Nonlinear response of the scintillators under ionizing ion irradiation is quantitatively evaluated by considering the energy partitioning process. In a differential energy deposition region with negligible displacement damage, the low, medium and high excitation energy deposition density (Dexci) can be produced by energetic Hþ, Heþ and O₃þ ions, respectively, and significantly different impacts on the response characteristics of these two benchmark scintillators are observed. For CaF₂:Eu, the scintillation efficiency under ion irradiation monotonically decreases with increasing excitation-energy density. In contrast, the response efficiency of YAlO₃:Ce scintillation initially increases with excitation-energy density at low excitation-energy densities, goes through a maximum, and then decreases with further increasing excitation-energy density. The fundamental mechanism causing these different response behaviours in the scintillators is based on the competition between the scintillation response and the nonradiative quenching process under different excitation densities, which is also the main origin of the nonlinear response of the scintillators to irradiation.

• Research Organization: Pacific Northwest National Lab. (PNNL), Richland, WA (United States). Environmental Molecular Sciences Lab. (EMSL)
• Sponsoring Organization: USDOE
• DOE Contract Number: AC05-76RL01830
• OSTI ID: 1227061
• Journal Information: Journal of Applied Physics, Vol. 115, Issue 3; ISSN 0021-8979
• Publisher: American Institute of Physics (AIP)
• Country of Publication: United States
• Language: English

Related Subjects

75 CONDENSED MATTER PHYSICS
SUPERCONDUCTIVITY AND SUPERFLUIDITY
Environmental Molecular Sciences Laboratory