In the fields of radiation detection and X-ray imaging, oil exploration poses more stringent and specific requirements for performance of scintillators. Scintillators have to be operated at temperature higher than 200 ℃, and sometimes they are used in high humidity environment. However, most of existing commercial scintillators, such as Bi4Ge3O12 and CsI:Tl, exhibit inferior thermal stability, which hinders their application in complex environment. Therefore, it is extremely urgent to develop new scintillator materials that possess both high thermal stability and excellent scintillating performance.
Recently, a team of material scientists led by Hai Guo from Zhejiang Normal University, China first reported the efficient Tb3+-doped glass scintillator with anti-thermal-quenching luminescence used for high-temperature X-ray imaging. This work not only provides new insights into enhancing the scintillating performance of glass scintillators but also demonstrates their potential for high-temperature X-ray imaging.
The team published their work in Journal of Advanced Ceramics on November 26, 2025.
"In this work, dual-channel thermally enhanced energy transfer is proposed to improve the thermal stability of Tb3+-doped glass scintillators with excellent scintillating performance," said Hai Guo, professor at Department of physics at Zhejiang Normal University (China), a senior expert whose research interests focus on the field of glass scintillators.
"Surprisingly, Tb3+-doped glass exhibits zero-thermal-quenching luminescence in PL and anti-thermal-quenching luminescence in XEL," said Hai Guo.
The Tb3+-doped glass shows excellent radiation stability and X-ray absorption capacity. More importantly, the XEL intensity reaches 365% of that of Bi4Ge3O12. And it exhibits obvious anti-thermal-quenching luminescence. The XEL intensity at 573 K is 168% of that at 303 K. Through thermoluminescence analysis, this phenomenon was proved to result from the energy transfer from traps to Tb3+ at high temperature. Besides, the thermal enhanced energy transfer from Ce3+ to Tb3+ also improves the thermal stability of glass scintillators, "The outstanding luminescent efficiency and thermal stability of Tb3+-doped glass prompted us to apply it to X-ray imaging," said Hai Guo.
In application of X-ray imaging, the spatial resolution of glass scintillator reaches 24 lp/mm. Its comprehensive scintillating performance surpasses that of most reported scintillator materials. Most notably, imaging resolution of Tb3+-doped glass scintillator reaches 24 lp/mm in high-temperature X-ray imaging. "These results fully verify the superiority of Tb3+-doped glass scintillator in X-ray imaging for extreme scenarios." said Hai Guo.
Other contributors include Lianjie Li, Junyu Chen, Guanlin He from Department of physics at Zhejiang Normal University (China), and Xvsheng Qiao from School of Materials Science and Engineering at Zhejiang University (China) and State Key Laboratory of Baiyunobo Rare Earth Resource Researches and Comprehensive Utilization at Baotou Research Institution of Rare Earths (China).
This work was supported by the National Natural Science Foundation of China (Grant No. 12574443 and No. 52372016).
About Author
Guo Hai, a professor at the Department of Physics, Zhejiang Normal University, mainly focuses on the research of new rare earth optical functional materials. He has published over 200 SCI-indexed papers as the first author or corresponding author in prestigious journals such as Adv. Mater., Adv. Funct. Mater., J. Adv. Ceram., Laser Photonics Rev., Sci. China Mater., Adv. Opt. Mater., J. Eur. Ceram. Soc., Chem. Eng. J., Sens. Actuators B Chem., Ceram. Int., Opt. Lett., and Opt. Express, with over 8,932 citations and an H-index of 52. He has been listed on the "Global Top 2% Scientists List" for both career and annual rankings (2019-2025). He has led four National Natural Science Foundation projects and three provincial fund projects. He has won one Third prize of the Zhejiang Provincial Natural Science Award (ranked first) and one Third prize of the Chongqing Natural Science Award (ranked second). Since 2015, he has served as an Associate Editor for the internationally renowned ceramic journal J. Am. Ceram. Soc. He is also a Young Editor for Journal of Rare Earths (both Chinese and English editions) and Chinese Journal of Luminescence, and a member of the Luminescence Professional Committee of the Chinese Society of Rare Earths, the Optoelectronic Materials and Devices Professional Committee of the Chinese Society of Rare Earths, and the Council of the Special Glass Branch of the Chinese Ceramic Society. He published the translated work An Introduction to the Optical Spectroscopy of Inorganic Solid.
About Journal of Advanced Ceramics
Journal of Advanced Ceramics (JAC) is an international academic journal that presents the state-of-the-art results of theoretical and experimental studies on the processing, structure, and properties of advanced ceramics and ceramic-based composites. JAC is Fully Open Access, monthly published by Tsinghua University Press, and exclusively available via SciOpen . JAC's 2024 IF is 16.6, ranking in Top 1 (1/33, Q1) among all journals in "Materials Science, Ceramics" category, and its 2024 CiteScore is 25.9 (5/130) in Scopus database. ResearchGate homepage: https://www.researchgate.net/journal/Journal-of-Advanced-Ceramics-2227-8508
