Enhanced scintillation of Ba₃In(B₃O₆)₃ based on nitrogen doping

Scintillating materials, as a class of luminescent materials, are highly demanded for practical use in the high-energy detection. However, the applications are often hampered by their low light yield (LY) or long decay time for many traditional scintillators. In this work, upon nitrogen anion doping, scintillation performance in layered borate Ba₃In(B₃O₆)₃ (BIB) has been excellently enhanced with high XEL intensity of ～3 times as large as that of commercial Bi₄Ge₃O₁₂ (BGO) and ultra-fast fluorescent decay time of ～1.25 ns. To shed light on origins of the intrinsic violet-blue emission, we measured the in-situ vacuum ultraviolet excited (VUV) emission spectra of N-BIB ceramic. Combined with experiments and first principles calculations, the band-gap reduction and donor-acceptor density increasing by nitrogen (N) doping is responsible for the enhancement of scintillation performance for N-doped Ba₃In(B₃O₆)₃. Moreover, nitrogen anion doping rather than conventional cation doping is found to be also applicable to other intrinsic luminescent materials for enhancing performance.