Fabrication and investigation of the effects of various gadolinium compounds on Ce3+-activated phosphate glasses for scintillation applications

Ce3+-activated phosphate-based glasses were fabricated for scintillation purposes following melt-quenching technique. Chemical compositions of the glasses were designed in mol. % ratio with formula (62P2O5:20Li2CO3:10X:5Al2O3:3CeBr3 where XGd2O3/GdF3/GdCl3/GdBr3/GdI3). The amorphous structure of the glasses was verified by the powder X-ray diffraction measurements. Fourier-transform infrared (FTIR) measurements were carried out to study the structural properties of the fabricated glass samples. X-ray-induced luminescence and photoluminescence (PL) spectra were used to investigate the luminescence properties of the glasses. A broad PL excitation band was found for all prepared glasses that refers to Gd3+ and Ce3+ characteristic transitions. GdI3 containing glass sample provided the optimum emission under X-ray and UV (308 nm) excitations peaking at 347 and 341 nm, respectively. The scintillation property of the GdI3 containing glass was studied under 5.5 MeV α-particle from 241Am radiation source and a clear alpha peak was observed with energy resolution of 35.3%. The shortest decay component of the glass sample was observed to be 27.9 ns, 30.7 ns and 29.12 ns under the α-particles, γ-ray, and 266 nm pulsed laser excitations, respectively. In conclusion, the GdI3 prepared glass sample can be used for α -particles detection.