Luminescence and Scintillation Properties of Dy3+ doped Li6Y(BO3)3 crystal

Abstract The orthoborate crystals with a wide optical bandgap allow different rare earth ions as an activator (Ce3+, Dy3+, Eu3+, etc.) to provide efficient luminescence. In the present study, Li6Y(BO3)3 pure and 4 mol% Dy3+ doped single crystals have been grown using the Czochralski method. The light emission of the grown crystals has been characterized by using X-ray luminescence, photoluminescence and thermoluminescence measurements. Intrinsic luminescence property has been observed for pure crystal at 330 nm and the characteristic emission of Dy3+ was observed in doped crystal under X-ray excitation. Photoluminescence study of the doped crystal at low temperature has shown the increased peak intensity with the decrease of temperature from 290 to 10 K. Decay time has been measured at the temperature ranging from 290 to 10 K which consists of three components in each stage. Thermally stimulated luminescence of both pure and 4 mol% Dy3+ doped LYBO crystals have been compared at low temperature from 320 K to 10 K. Scintillation β− counts measured from 300 K to 10 K. The performance of the doped crystal has been tested as a scintillator for thermal neutron imaging.