Abstract
Scintillator silica fine powder pellets showed photoluminescence and mechanoluminescence. The mechanoluminescence intensity decreased by about 90% in approximately 30 min at room temperature. The photoluminescence intensity increased and remained constant after 5 min when UV light was irradiated onto the pellets. This suggested shallow traps in the energy structure of the scintillator silica fine powders. The counting efficiency of 0.8 ± 0.2 Bq of tritium was enhanced from 27 to 212 times when the shallow traps were excited by the dropwise addition of 2687 ± 11 Bq of tritium or UV light irradiation on the same surface of the pellets.
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Acknowledgements
The TEM observations were performed by Mr. Ueki at Tokushima University, and the measurements of the fluorescence lifetime were performed by Hamamatsu Photonics Inc., to whom we are sincerely grateful. This work was supported by the Japan Science and Technology Agency (JST) under the Matching Planner Program through Grant Number MP27115658836.
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Miyoshi, H., Gotoh, H., Hiroura, M. et al. Enhancement of counting efficiency for tritium using light-excited scintillator silica pellets. J Radioanal Nucl Chem 311, 1991–1999 (2017). https://doi.org/10.1007/s10967-017-5185-2
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DOI: https://doi.org/10.1007/s10967-017-5185-2