Scintillating properties of pure and doped BGO ceramics

• Published in: Journal of materials science 2007-04, Vol.42 (7), p.2231-2235
• Main Authors: SANTANA, Geane C, DE MELLO, Ana Carolina S, VALERIO, Mario E. G, SOARES MACEDO, Zélia
• Format: Article
• Language: English
• Subjects: Applied sciences; BGO (crystal); Building materials. Ceramics. Glasses; Ceramic industries; Ceramics; Chemical industry and chemicals; Condensed matter: electronic structure, electrical, magnetic, and optical properties; Electrotechnical and electronic ceramics; Emission; Europium; Exact sciences and technology; Excitation; Materials science; Optical properties and condensed-matter spectroscopy and other interactions of matter with particles and radiation; Other solid inorganic materials; Photoluminescence; Photoluminescent bands; Photons; Physics; Radiation detectors; Rare earth metals; Scintillation counters; Technical ceramics
• ISSN: 0022-2461; 1573-4803
• DOI: 10.1007/s10853-006-1319-6

The ceramic processing and characterization of Bi4Ge3O12 pure and doped with Eu3+ and Nd3+ was performed in order to investigate its potential use in radiation detector devices. Single phase Bi4Ge3O12 in pure state and containing 1% of the dopands Nd3+ and Eu3+ were produced via a solid state route and their photoluminescent and radioluminescent properties were investigated. When excited at 200–230 nm, pure BGO ceramics presented a wide photoluminescent band emission centered at 450 nm, assigned to the Bi3+ internal transitions. For the doped samples under the same excitation, this wide band was superposed by the emission peaks of the rare earth dopands, at around 600 nm for BGO:Eu3+ and at 350 nm, 430 and 600 nm for BGO:Nd3+. Radioluminescence measurements presented similar results and allowed the determination of the light output efficiency of the three scintillators. The values determined were 4 × 103 photons/MeV for BGO:Nd and 5.9 × 103 photons/MeV for BGO:Eu, which are higher than the value 3.9 × 103 photons/MeV determined previously for the pure ceramic. A selective sensibility of the BGO:Eu ceramics to the nature and energy of the radiation, which is not observed in pure samples, was also presented and discussed.