Achieving anti-thermal-quenching in Tb³⁺-doped glass scintillators via dual-channel thermally enhanced energy transfer

Because of the requirements of high-temperature industrial flaw detection and oil exploration, glass scintillators for application in high-temperature X-ray imaging have attracted great interest from researchers. In this work, dual-channel thermally enhanced energy transfer (ET) is proposed to improve the thermal stability of Tb³⁺-doped glass scintillators with excellent scintillating performance. One channel is the thermally enhanced ET from Ce³⁺ to Tb³⁺ by codoping with Ce³⁺, and the other channel is the thermal compensation effect from traps to Tb³⁺ with increasing density of traps by codoping with Ce³⁺. The obtained glass scintillators possess high transmittance (exceeding 86.6% at 542 nm), excellent X-ray excited luminescence (XEL) intensity (365% of that of Bi₄Ge₃O₁₂ (BGO)), and superior imaging resolution (24 lp/mm). In addition, anti-thermal-quenching luminescence in XEL (the XEL intensity (I_XEL) at 573 K is 168% of that at 303 K) is achieved. All the results undeniably demonstrated that the designed Ce³⁺ and Tb³⁺ codoped glass scintillators have significant potential for high-temperature X-ray imaging. Dual-channel thermally enhanced ET is beneficial for the development of Tb³⁺-doped glass scintillators with superior scintillating performance and excellent thermal stability.