Initial studies into the viability of using co-dopants in inorganic glass scintillators to develop a scintillating glass for applications in particle physics experiments

Inorganic glasses are a potential source of affordable scintillators for particle physics; however, for application to calorimetry, dense glasses are required, and oxide glasses with the necessary characteristics have proved difficult to produce. Recent work has demonstrated that cerium-doped heavy metal fluoride (HMF) glasses have many of the required properties, although their performance is limited by the fact that CeF3 emission is in the near ultraviolet, close to the band edge for transmission in the glass. The light yield from large blocks of glass is, therefore, reduced by self-absorption. The yield is further reduced when the material is exposed to ionising radiation, which causes the formation of colour centres, increasing absorption at short wavelengths. This work reports on initial studies into the addition of rare earth fluorides to Ce-doped HMF glasses as a means of moving the emission wavelength away from the absorption edge and some developments in the manufacture of dense oxide glasses. A number of co-doped glasses have been made and measurements on transmission, scintillation yield and decay time are presented, showing a strong correlation between yield and decay time.