Transparent heavily Eu3+-doped boroaluminate glass for X-ray detection

Abstract As one of the commonly used scintillating materials, single crystals inhibit their further practical applications considering the high cost, limited volume, and time-wasting preparation technique. By the compelling requirement for radiative detection in a variety of fields, numerous novel scintillators have been developed. Here, a novel efficient and transparent Eu3+-doped boroaluminate glass was successfully fabricated by melt-quenching technique. The optical responses to ultraviolet–visible (UV) and X-ray are both significantly enhanced by heavily doping Eu3+ into the glass host. The optimal doping concentration of Eu3+ is 8 mol%. Moreover, the internal quantum yield (IQY) was evaluated to 53.2% with high transparency (83% @ 600 nm). More notably, the best specimen has 18.4% X-ray excited luminescence (XEL) integrated intensity of that of the commercial Bi4Ge3O12 single crystal scintillator. According to our findings, heavily doped boroaluminate glass could be one of the alternative scintillating materials for slow process detection.