Evaluation of Nd:BaY2F8 for VUV scintillator

Vacuum Ultra violet (VUV) scintillators, have a short decay time around several ns, and therefore can be used in high counting rate applications. New Nd-doped BaY2F8 VUV scintillator crystals were successfully grown by a micro-pulling down (μ-PD) method and their optical properties and radiation response were investigated. All the BaY2F8 samples with 0.5, 1, 3, 7 and 10 mol% Nd concentration had 5d-4f luminescence peaks at 185, 237 and 270 nm. Although this scintillator has low light output around 70 photons/5.5-MeV alpha, which was determined from our pulse height measurement, we found that the decay time of this crystal reached 13 ns which is a typical value for the VUV scintillators. -- Highlights: ► We have developed BaY2F8 doped with Nd3+ for a VUV scintillator. ► This crystal did not have radio-isotope (138La, 176Lu). ► We succeeded in obtaining the pulse height spectra by 5.5-MeV alpha-ray irradiation. ► The decay time of the 10 mol% Nd doped BaY2F8 was 13.3 (99%) and 30 ns (1%). ► This decay time of this crystal was around a value typical for VUV scintillators