Semiconducting and scintillating glasses for x-ray detection

Abstract

X-ray detectors are commonly used for medical, crystallography and space physics applications. Most of the current x-ray detectors use cadmium zinc telluride (CZT) as the active medium. This report investigates high density semiconducting and scintillating glasses as potential alternatives to CZT. For the semiconducting glasses, samples composed of xCuO–((1−x)/2)PbO–((1−x)/2)V2O5 and xFeO–((1−x)/2)PbO–((1−x)/2)V2O5, for the scintillating glasses, samples composed of xGd2O3+yWO3+(1−x−y)2H3BO3, doped with 1–6% Eu3+ or Tb3+, were investigated in this study. The glass-making conditions, density, Raman spectroscopy analysis, photoluminescence excitation and emission spectra, as well as conductivity measurements performed on various samples, are reported. The interaction of x-rays with all the glass samples was simulated using GATE software, and their mass attenuation coefficients were calculated and compared with CZT.