Low-Cost Synthesis of the Scintillator Compound, Eu- and Dy-Doped SrAl12O19 (SA6), as a Model Material for Electronic Structure Characterization.

Crystalline inorganic scintillator materials, such as rare earth -doped strontium aluminate compounds, offer a cost-effective alternative to the widely used single crystal materials in radiation detection. The overall goal of our work is to develop a model for the effect of dopants in such materials on mechanisms of extended afterglow. To this end, the requirements for characterizing the crystal field impose demands for single phase, crystalline powders. We would like to present a solution polymerization process for synthesizing SA6 doped with Eu and Dy. When reduced, these phosphoresce in the green spectral range, and some control over the length of persistence has already been reported. To obtain single phase strontium aluminate compounds, the Pechini process was modified, in order to enable the use of nitrate precursors to form the desired inorganic solid lattices. The key mechanism is based on using a carboxylic acid group and an alcohol to trap metallic cations inside an organic environment, a resin, and igniting the mixture at relatively low temperatures to form the ceramic crystal structures. In contrast to the more commonly used solid state diffusion process (typically at 1900 °C), our modified process allows synthesis at 1100 °C and yields the single phase, crystalline structural properties necessary for characterization. We would present the modified solution polymerization process, which was developed via XRD, STA, and FT-IR, photoluminescence, and electron energy loss spectroscopy analyses, that yielded the model systems for further study of the crystal field in these scintillator materials. The materials characterization techniques implemented would also be broadly applicable in the study of other scintillator materials