高密度高载钆闪烁玻璃的闪烁性能和中子探测性能研究

The scintillation performance and physicochemical properties of the glass scintillator can be tuned by changing the glass matrix composition and doping elements, making it a versatile scintillation material. In addition, glass scintillators have the advantages of relatively simple preparation process, low cost, excellent forming and processing performance, and ease of large-scale and industrial production, demonstrating great applications potential on nuclear radiation detection and high-energy physics experiments. In order to develop high-performance glass scintillator (i.e., high density, moderate light yield, and fast decay), the Institute of High Energy Physics (IHEP), together with several domestic universities, institutes and nuclear detector development enterprises, established a Glass Scintillator R&D Collaboration (GS collaboration) to promote the research and application of high-performance scintillation glass since 2021. Based on the high-density glass scintillator samples with high Gd content prepared by the GS collaboration, this study explored their scintillation performance and capability of neutron detection, providing a preliminary research foundation for the application of highly Gd-loaded glass scintillators in neutron detection. Preliminary results show that the glass density can reach 6 g/ cm³, the light yield is greater than 1 000 ph/ MeV and the decay time is close to 400 ns. In addition, the glass sample can detect signals from neutron reactions, but effective discrimination between neutron and gamma events has not yet been achieved.