Growth and scintillation properties of Ce:Li6Y(BO3)3 crystal enriched with 10B isotopes

In the present work, single crystal of Ce:Li6Y(BO3)3 enriched with 10B isotopes (Ce:LY10BO) has been grown by Czochralski technique. The X-ray powder diffraction patterns showed that Ce:LY10BO crystal belongs to monoclinic system. The optical and scintillation properties of the crystal, such as optical transmittance, photoluminescence, X-ray induced luminescence, multi-channel energy spectrum under the excitation of thermal neutrons and decay time under the excitation of UV light, were measured. The optical transmission from 400 nm to 800 nm of the crystal with 1 mm thickness was above 75%, which revealed that Ce:LY10BO crystal had good optical quality. The energy resolution under the excitation of thermal neutron was estimated to be 33%. And the decay time under the excitation of UV light was fitted to be 24 ns. So Ce:LY10BO crystal was found with good energy resolution and fast decay time, which meant that it was a promising fast scintillator for thermal neutron detection.