Gadolinium contained scintillation glass for neutron detection in a wide energy range

Inorganic scintillation glasses form a domain of rapidly evolving detector materials used to measure various types of ionizing radiation. The most widespread are lithium-silicate glasses enriched with the ⁶Li isotope, which are used to register thermal neutrons. At the same time, due to the specificity of the energy dependence of the neutron cross-section of light nuclei, such materials are of little use for the evaluation of epithermal and more highly energetic neutrons. The use of rare earth elements in the composition of glasses makes it possible to increase the sensitivity to neutrons. In the BaO-Gd₂O₃-SiO₂ system, doped with Ce ions, a scintillation glass with a yield of at least 2500 photons / MeV was created for the first time, which permits to create inexpensive detector elements of a significant volume for registering neutrons. It has been shown that a detector based on BaO-Gd₂O₃-SiO₂ glass has satisfactory properties when detecting neutrons in a wide spectrum of their energies. (authors)