Relationship between microstructure and efficiency of lithium silicate scintillating glasses: The effect of alkaline earths

摘要

Lithium silicate glasses containing Ce(sup 3+) are known to be scintillators. Glasses in this family in which the Li is enriched ((sup 6)Li) are used as neutron detectors. The addition of Mg to this glass is known to increase the scintillation efficiency. We have found that substituting other alkaline earths results in a monotonic decrease of the scintillation efficiency with increasing atomic number. The total variation in scintillation efficiency from Mg to Ba is nearly a factor of 3. Prior experiments with this glass family show small differences in Raman and fluorescence spectra; evidence from thermoluminescence experiments indicates that the scintillation efficiency is most strongly correlated with structural effects in the neighborhood of the Ce(sup 3+) activator ion. The results of low-temperature studies of fluorescence and thermoluminescence of these glasses will be reported.