Luminescence and scintillation properties of Y3Al5O12:Ce single crystals and single-crystal films

Abstract

Luminescence and scintillation properties of Y 3 A l5 O 12 :Ce single crystals grown from the melt by the Czochralski and horizontal directed crystallization methods in various gas media and Y 3 A l5 O 12 :Ce single-crystal films grown by liquid-phase epitaxy from a melt solution based on a PbO-B 2 O 3 flux have been comparatively analyzed. The strong dependence of scintillation properties of Y 3 A l5 O 12 :Ce single crystals on their growth conditions and concentrations of Y Al antisite defects and vacancy defects has been established. Vacancy defects are involved in Ce 3+ ion emission excitation as the centers of intrinsic UV luminescence and trapping centers. It has been shown that Y 3 A l5 O 12 :Ce single-crystal films are characterized by faster scintillation decay kinetics than single crystals and a lower content of slow components in Ce 3+ ion luminescence decay during high-energy excitation due to the absence of Y Al antisite defects in them and low concentration of vacancy defects. At the same time, the light yield of Y 3 A l5 O 12 :Ce single-crystal films is comparable to that of single crystals grown by directed crystallization due to the quenching effect of the Pb 2+ ion impurity as a flux component and is slightly lower (∼25%) than the light yield of single crystals grown by the Czochralski method.