Optical, scintillation and dosimeter properties of MgO translucent ceramic doped with Cr3+

• We have synthesized MgO translucent ceramics doped with Cr3+ ion by an SPS technique.
• We have characterized the optical, scintillation and dosimeter properties.
• All samples have a linear response over the X-ray dose range of 0.1–1000 mGy.

We have investigated the photoluminescence (PL), scintillation and thermally-stimulated luminescence (TSL) dosimeter properties of MgO translucent ceramic doped with Cr3+ ion (0.001, 0.01 and 0.1%). The ceramic samples were synthesized by a Spark Plasma Sintering (SPS) technique. The broad and sharp emission peaks appeared around 600–850 nm in all the samples. The PL decay time constants of all the samples were a few ms which were on the typical order of Cr3+ doped phosphors. As with the PL, the peak resulted from Cr3+ ion was detected in the scintillation spectra. The TSL glow curves showed the main peak around 140 °C. The TSL response was confirmed to be linear to the irradiation dose over the dose range from 0.1 to 1000 mGy.