Crystal growth, optical, luminescence and scintillation characterization of Li2Zn2(MoO4)3 crystal

Highlights: • Li₂Zn₂(MoO₄)₃ single crystal was grown successfully with flux method using an LTG-CZ technique. • The ratio of Li₂Zn₂(MoO₄)₃ and Li₂MoO₄ was obtained as 90:10 for a quality single crystal. • Crystal structure, optical, luminescence, and scintillation properties of the crystal were reported. • A significant increase of luminescence and scintillation light at ~10 K compared to that at 300 K. • At 10 K, compared to CaMoO4 crystal, the luminescence and scintillation light of Li₂Zn₂(MoO₄)₃ is ~70% and ~8%, respectively. -- Abstract: A Li₂Zn₂(MoO₄)₃ (LZMO) single crystal was grown by the flux method under the condition of a low temperature-gradient. The obtained crystal has a single-phase confirmed by a powder X-ray diffraction study. Luminescence properties of the crystal have been studied from room to cryogenic (300–6 K) temperatures under excitation by a 280 nm light-emitting diode (LED). At 6 K, the grown crystal exhibits an intrinsic emission band with emission wavelength ranges from 400 to 900 nm, and the maximum peak at ~612 nm. From 6 to 280 K, the luminescence decay time of the crystal was studied using the 280 nm LED. The decay times for the entire temperature range were fitted with two exponential decay functions. The temperature-dependent (300–10 K) scintillation light yield was studied under the excitation of a ⁹⁰Sr (beta) radioactive source. We compared scintillation and luminescence light yields of the LZMO with a reference CaMoO₄ crystal. Thermoluminescence study of the crystal was carried out from 9 to 300 K and different kinematic parameters such as activation energy and frequency factor have been calculated. From this study, it shows that the LZMO crystal has potential as detector material in experiments searching for neutrinoless double-beta decay of ¹⁰⁰Mo at cryogenic temperatures.