Characterization of scintillation properties of Nd-doped Bi4Ge3O12 single crystals with near-infrared luminescence

We synthesized the Nd-doped Bi4Ge3O12 (BGO) single crystals with different concentrations of Nd (0.1, 0.5, and 1%) by the floating zone method and evaluated the photoluminescence (PL) and scintillation properties. In both the PL and scintillation spectra, intrinsic luminescence of BGO was observed at 400-600 nm. In addition, emission peaks due to the 4f-4f transitions of Nd3+ were observed in the near-infrared range. The 0.5% Nd-doped sample indicated the highest quantum yield of 42.9% among the samples. All the samples showed good linearity between X-ray exposure dose rate and the emission intensity in the NIR range. The lowest detectable dose rates were 0.06 Gy/h in the 0.1 and 1% Nd-doped BGO samples, and that of the 0.5% Nd-doped BGO sample was 0.01 Gy/h.