Thermal neutron detection using lanthanide oxybromides

Highlights: • The lanthanide oxybromides was studied for the use as potential scintillators for thermal neutron detection. • The advantage of these powders is their decay time being hundreds of time shorter compared to zinc sulfide. • The relative thermal neutron sensitivity of LaOBr:Ce/LiF was proven to be higher than in the case of ZnS:Ag/LiF. -- Abstract: The work presents selected lanthanide oxybromides such as GdOBr:Ce, LaOBr:Ce, YOBr:Ce and EuOBr:Ce as potential thermal neutron detection compounds in connection with Li-6 isotope. The oxybromides were prepared by solid-state synthesis and the crystallinity of compounds was determined by X-ray powder diffraction analysis. Subsequently, the study of radioluminescence spectra was performed to compare the light intensity of each compound. Furthermore, since the primary purpose is charged particles detection, e.g. alpha and Triton, the sensitivity of the compounds to alpha radiation was determined. In connection with fast decay time, high light yield and simple production it is possible to consider this group of scintillation phosphors as a potential substitute of ZnS:Ag in thermal neutron detection systems, to which all measured characteristics were compared to.