Fast Scintillating Ce ³⁺ Doped Gadolinium Aluminum Fluoroborate Glass for Proton Dosimeter

Abstract

In this work, Ce³⁺ doped gadolinium aluminum fluoroborate (GAF) glass scintillators, 25Gd₂O₃-(65-x)B₂O₃-10AlF₃-xCeF₃, where, x = 0, 0.05, 0.1, 0.2, and, 0.3 mol%, were prepared and studied purposefully for proton dosimeter used in the developing proton-computed tomography. Various properties of the prepared glass scintillators were studied, including density, X-ray-absorption near-edge spectroscopy (XANES), transmittance spectra, photoluminescence (PL), decay time, X-ray-induced luminescence, and proton-induced luminescence. The highest density of the fabricated glass scintillators reached 4.31 g/cm³. X-ray-induced luminescence showed a broad emission band centered at approximately 380 nm, and the decay time was less than 30 ns. The glass scintillators were irradiated by a proton beam at King Chulalongkorn Memorial Hospital (KCMH) with a beam energy of 95–115 MeV. It was found that the glass scintillators emitted light at almost the same wavelength as the X-ray-induced luminescence. Moreover, the energy deposition inside the fabricated glass scintillators was simulated using GATE simulation and compared with the results obtained for proton-induced luminescence. From these results, the energy deposition from the simulation showed the same trend as the amount of light emitted from the proton irradiation measurement. Therefore, the fabricated glass scintillators could offer promising properties for use in proton dosimeters in medical physics and other applications regarding proton or X-ray irradiation measurements.

Keywords: Ce3+, gadolinium aluminum fluoroborate glass, X-ray induced luminescence, proton-induced luminescence