Radiation damage of silicate glasses doped with Tb3+ and Eu3+

Abstract In this work, we studied a set of Tb 3+ (or Eu 3+ ) doped silicate glasses in which some amounts of BaO were added to increase glass density. The irradiation-induced damage was investigated by absorbance measurements performed before and after each irradiation with doses ranging from 3 to 237 Gy. Analysed glasses underwent also light yield measurements investigated in terms of light production. The results showed that radiation damage and light yield depend on glass composition and are very low for the Eu 3+ containing glass and for the Tb 3+ activated glass which contains also lead. A possible explanation could be that lead and europium favour in the glass matrix the formation of a higher concentration of defects with respect to Tb 3+ doping ions.