Study of vacuum ultraviolet scintillation in rare earth doped Lutetium fluoride

Abstract

Single crystalline LuF 3 doped with Nd 3+ , Er 3+ , and Tm 3+ were synthesized by Tokuyama Corp. aiming to apply VUV emitting scintillators. In X-ray induced radioluminescence, they exhibited VUV luminescence at 160-180 nm due to 5d-4f transitions. Among them, Nd-doped one showed the highest scintillation light yield of ~ 1000 ph/MeV when irradiated by 137 Cs γ-rays. The scintillation decay time of Nd-doped LuF3 resulted quite fast 7.6 ns.