Luminescent properties of undoped and Ce3+ doped crystals in Y2O3 Lu2O3 Al2O3 triple oxide system grown by micro-pulling-down method

Abstract Within this work, the undoped and Ce3+ doped Y2O3 – Al2O3 double system crystals were grown from the melt by micro-pulling-down method and their basic luminescent properties have been investigated. Luminescent properties of the obtained crystal samples were studied by cathodo- and thermo-luminescence methods (CL and TL, respectively). The TL spectra were measured after the samples irradiation with both beta and alpha particles. It was found that the obtained cerium doped crystals exhibit dominant emission bands with maxima at around 380 nm in the centers of crystals, and low-intensive satellite band peaked at 560 nm at the boundaries of crystals, what corresponds to the well-known perovskite and garnet phases, respectively. For Y Lu substituted crystals only the emission band of garnet phase was observed. It tends to suggest that even a small substitution of Y3+ by Lu3+ ions in the host lattice causes a strong suppression of the 380 nm luminescence of the perovskite phase. This was also confirmed by TL spectra measurements performed over the different spectral ranges. A good agreement of CL and TL emission spectra suggests that the same emission centers are involved in both processes. The obtained results showed that, besides of the well-known scintillating properties, the materials under study can be also considered as the energy storage phosphors for dosimetric applications.