Selective enhancement of deep ultraviolet luminescence in barium fluoride scintillators via photonic crystal structures

Abstract

Barium fluoride (BaF2) scintillators are known for their various applications in high-energy particle detection due to their ultrafast scintillation component that lies within the deep ultraviolet spectral band. However, their slow scintillation component can cause issues in high-rate applications. The slow component can be suppressed by ion-doping, whereas the fast component should be enhanced to further improve the performance of BaF2 scintillators. Here, we utilize photonic crystal structures to selectively enhance the deep ultraviolet fast component of BaF2 scintillators. The photonic crystal structures, composed of hollow shell arrays, are designed to selectively couple with the fast component via surface lattice resonances. An enhancement with a ratio of 1.69 in the light output of the fast component is achieved without affecting the slow component. In addition to the applications on BaF2 scintillators, we anticipate that this light manipulation approach, which selectively enhances emission at specific deep ultraviolet band, could be expanded to other important fields, such as deep ultraviolet light-emitting diodes and solar cells.