Significant enhancement of scintillation performance by inducing oxygen vacancies in alkali metal ion (A+ = Li+, Na+, K+)-incorporated (Lu, Sc)BO3:Ce.

ABSTRACT

The incorporation of Sc3+ can stabilize calcite-phase LuBO3Ce3+ to grow large-sized single crystals but leads to the significant degradation of scintillation performance. In the present work, alkali metal ion (A+ = Li+, Na+, K+)-incorporated (Lu, A, Sc)BO3Ce was rapidly synthesized in batches via a high-throughput sol-gel method. The aliovalent substitution of Lu3+ with A+ is balanced by the generation of oxygen vacancies by forming complexes. Thanks to the increased oxygen vacancies, the luminescence and XEL intensity of (Lu, Li, Sc)BO3Ce are significantly enhanced by 2.2 times and 1.9 times, respectively. Further, the incorporation of A+ is attributed to the improved transition efficiency of charge carriers. The prepared scintillation screen fabricated with LASBOCe and PMMA shows that the spatial resolution can reach 8.6 lp mm-1, indicating its potential application in efficient and low-cost non-destructive X-ray detection. This work is of great significance in improving the luminescence and scintillation performance of (Lu, Sc)BO3Ce single crystals and thin films and their application in the scintillation field.