Proton damage measurements of rare earth oxide scintillators

This paper reports on the development of a measurement technique to determine the degradation in light output under exposure to 3 MeV protons. The rare earth oxide scintillators included Gd2O2S doped with Pr. Tb, and Eu; Y2O2S doped with Tb and Eu; Y3Al5O12 (YAG) doped with Ce; and ZnS doped with Ag. Four scintillator samples were painted on a rotatable water cooled turret used to measure the proton beam current with thermocouples for temperature monitoring. The data acquisition and storage system consists of an ACRO module interfaced to a Macintosh SE/30 computer running LabVIEW software. Results indicate that the YAG doped with Ce scintillator coating withstood a proton dose an order of magnitude large than that tolerated by the other phosphor compounds. This fact has significant implication for the use of this material for experimental scintillator applications