Scintillation property and highly efficient photoluminescence of cerium-doped BaF2–Al2O3–B2O3 glass for thermal neutron detection

Glass has several advantages over single crystals and transparent ceramics, including easier formability, increased productivity, and higher versatility in composition. However, the scintillation properties should be further enhanced for practical applications. Herein, we focused on fluoroborate glass, which has a high quantum yield. The xCeF3–(50-x)BaF2–25Al2O3–25B2O3 glass showed luminescence quantum efficiency up to 83% with a broad peak at 380 nm, and its concentration in the quantum yield was remarkably low. The lifetime of the X-ray-induced luminescence was also insignificant to the concentration. The light yields were obtained from the pulse height spectrum: for gamma rays from 241Am, up to 411 photons MeV−1; and for neutrons with 252Cf as the source, up to 1717 photons n−1 were observed. The performance of glass for thermal neutron detection using inexpensive natural abundant B2O3 was notably good. Thus, the possibility of developing an inexpensive glass scintillator has been presented here.