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Crystal growth, luminescence, and scintillation properties of Zn2Te3O8 crystal for 0νββ decay search.
- Source :
- CrystEngComm; 1/14/2024, Vol. 26 Issue 2, p223-232, 10p
- Publication Year :
- 2024
-
Abstract
- A single crystal of Zn<subscript>2</subscript>Te<subscript>3</subscript>O<subscript>8</subscript> (ZTO) was grown using the conventional Czochralski technique. TGA analysis showed that the melting point of ZTO is 681 °C, while it exhibits a structural phase transition at 621 °C. The powder X-ray diffraction analysis of ZTO confirmed that it possesses a single crystalline monoclinic structure with the C2/c space group. An indirect band gap of 3.75 eV was estimated for the ZTO crystal based on its absorption spectrum. The X-ray-induced luminescence of the grown crystal comprised a broad band peaking at 565 nm, which can be tentatively assigned to the self-trapped exciton emission from the (Te<subscript>3</subscript>O<subscript>8</subscript>)<superscript>4−</superscript> molecular complexes. The photoluminescence measured under 280 nm excitation showed a broad band luminescence peaking at about 600 nm, and its intensity was significantly enhanced upon cooling the crystal from 300 K to 10 K. The photoluminescence decay time under 280 nm excitation was shown to have two exponential components in the range from 10 K to 175 K, which became a single exponential upon further heating the crystal. Low scintillation light was observed at room temperature both under α- and β-particle excitations from <superscript>241</superscript>Am and <superscript>90</superscript>Sr sources, respectively. The scintillation light yield measured under β-particle excitation from the <superscript>90</superscript>Sr source was enhanced by about five orders of magnitude at 10 K in comparison to that at 300 K. The scintillation light yield measured at 10 K under the same experimental conditions for ZTO in comparison with the well-known cryogenic scintillator Li<subscript>2</subscript>MoO<subscript>4</subscript> (LMO) was shown to have four times higher scintillation light. A single-crystal ingot of ZTO was obtained for the first time; however, it had several cracks due to its phase transition. Notably, scintillation at low temperatures for a Te-based crystal was observed for the first time. These preliminary findings are very promising and show that ZTO will be a good candidate for cryogenic phonon scintillation detectors for the 0νββ decay search of <superscript>130</superscript>Te. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]
Details
- Language :
- English
- ISSN :
- 14668033
- Volume :
- 26
- Issue :
- 2
- Database :
- Complementary Index
- Journal :
- CrystEngComm
- Publication Type :
- Academic Journal
- Accession number :
- 174564878
- Full Text :
- https://doi.org/10.1039/d3ce01032e