Sintered pellets: A simple and cost effective method to predict the performance of GGAG:Ce single crystals

• Sintered pellets were firstly used to predict the performance of single crystals.
• Similar properties between sintered pellets and single crystals were investigated.
• B and Ba increase luminescence intensity in pellets and light yield in crystals.
• Ca shortens photoluminescence decay in pellets and scintillation decay in crystals.

Polycrystalline Gd3Ga3Al2O12:Ce (GGAG:Ce) pellets with various codopants were prepared via solid-state synthesis and characterized by X-ray diffraction, radioluminescence (RL), photoluminescence (PL), reflectivity and PL decay measurements. GGAG:Ce pellets codoped with B and Ba were found to have higher RL intensity than pellets with other codopants, while Ca codoping improved the decay time but reduced the RL intensity. These results were strongly correlated with the performance of these codopants in GGAG:Ce single crystals. The light yield of the single crystals codoped with B or Ba was ∼15% higher than the light yield of the GGAG:Ce crystal without codoping, while Ca codoping in single crystals resulted in lower light yield but shorter scintillation decay time (43 ns vs. 56 ns). The consistent performance of these codopants in both matrix forms indicates that sintering pellets may be used as a simple cost effective technique to evaluate compositions for likely single crystal scintillator performance.