Effect of host glass matrix on structural and optical behavior of glass–ceramic nanocomposite scintillators

• Novel scintillators synthesized and characterized via light yield.
• Precipitated crystallites compared between the two glass systems.
• ABS glass has high structural order in as-cast state, resulting in higher light yield.
• Rare-earth oxide and metaborate crystals precipitated instead of rare-earth halides.

Composite scintillator systems have received increased attention in recent years due to their promise for merging the radioisotope discrimination capabilities of single crystal scintillators with the high throughput scanning capabilities of portal monitors. However, producing the high light yield required for good energy resolution has proven challenging as scintillation photons are often scattered by variations in refractive index and agglomerated scintillator crystals within the composite. This investigation sought to mitigate these common problems by using glass–ceramic nanocomposite materials systems in which nanoscale scintillating crystallites are precipitated in a controlled manner from a transparent glass matrix. Precipitating crystallites in situ precludes nanoparticle agglomeration, and limiting crystallite size to 50 nm or less mitigates the effect of refractive index mismatch between the crystals and host glass. Cerium-doped gadolinium bromide (GdBr3(Ce)) scintillating crystals were incorporated into sodium-aluminosilicate (NAS) and alumino-borosilicate (ABS) host glass matrices, and the resulting glass–ceramic structures and luminescence behavior were characterized. The as-cast glass from the ABS system displayed a highly ordered microstructure that produced the highest luminescence intensity (light yield) of the samples studied. However, heat treating to form the glass–ceramic precipitated rare-earth oxide crystallites rather than rare-earth halides. This degraded light yield relative to the unaged sample.