Gyuhyon Lee

Synthesis and characterization of a BaGdF5:Tb glass ceramic as a nanocomposite scintillator for x-ray imaging.

Transparent glass ceramics with embedded light-emitting nanocrystals show great potential as low-cost nanocomposite scintillators in comparison to single crystal and transparent ceramic scintillators. In this study, cubic structure BaGdF5:Tb nanocrystals embedded in an aluminosilicate glass matrix are reported for potential high performance MeV imaging applications. Scintillator samples with systematically varied compositions were prepared by a simple conventional melt-quenching method followed by annealing. Optical, structural and scintillation properties were characterized to guide the design and optimization of selected material systems, aiming at the development of a system with higher crystal volume and larger crystal size for improved luminosity. It is observed that enhanced scintillation performance was achieved by tuning the glass matrix composition and using GdF3 in the raw materials, which served as a nucleation agent. A 26% improvement in light output was observed from a BaGdF5:Tb glass ceramic with addition of GdF3.

A neutron scintillator based on transparent nanocrystalline CaF2:Eu glass ceramic

There are no efficient Eu2+ doped glass neutron scintillators reported due to low doping concentrations of Eu2+ and the amorphous nature of the glass matrix. In this work, an efficient CaF2:Eu glass ceramic neutron scintillator was prepared by forming CaF2:Eu nanocrystals in a 6Li-containing glass matrix. Through appropriate thermal treatments, the scintillation light yield of the transparent glass ceramic was increased by a factor of at least 46 compared to the as-cast amorphous glass. This improvement was attributed to more efficient energy transfer from the CaF2 crystals to the Eu2+ emitting centers. Further light yield improvement is expected if the refractive index of the glass matrix can be matched to the CaF2 crystal.

Exploration of CdTe quantum dots as mesoscale pressure sensors via time-resolved shock-compression photoluminescent emission spectroscopy

The nanometer size of CdTe quantum dots (QDs) and their unique optical properties, including size-tunable narrow photoluminescent emission, broad absorption, fast photoluminescence decay, and negligible light scattering, are ideal features for spectrally tagging the shock response of localized regions in highly heterogeneous materials such as particulate media. In this work, the time-resolved laser-excited photoluminescence response of QDs to shock-compression was investigated to explore their utilization as mesoscale sensors for pressure measurements and in situ diagnostics during shock loading experiments. Laser-driven shock-compression experiments with steady-state shock pressures ranging from 2.0 to 13u2009GPa were performed on nanocomposite films of CdTe QDs dispersed in a soft polyvinyl alcohol polymer matrix and in a hard inorganic sodium silicate glass matrix. Time-resolved photoluminescent emission spectroscopy was used to correlate photoluminescence changes with the history of shock pressure and the...

Design and fabrication of distributed Bragg reflector multilayers for dynamic pressure sensing

A novel 2D-surface shock pressure sensor is designed and tested based on 1D-Photonic Crystal, i.e., Distributed Bragg Reflector Multilayer (DBR/ML) structures. The fast opto-mechanical response of these structures to changes in layer thicknesses and refractive indices are ideally suited for dynamic pressure sensing. They offer the potential to minimize acoustic impedance mismatch between the material layers, and most importantly, the potential to monitor both temporal and spatial (lateral) variations during shock compression. In this feasibility study, different materials and device designs are investigated to identify material/device design combinations with optimum response to dynamic loading. Structural and material effects are studied in terms of spectral and mechanical properties, structure stability, and the ease of fabrication process. Structures comprising of different numbers of SiO1.5/SiO1.7 bilayer stacks are modeled, and fabricated. A 10-bilayer structure placed under a dynamic compressive load of ~7.2 GPa, exhibits a blueshift of 29 nm with a response time of ~5 ns which is well within the shock pressure rise time measured with PDV velocimetry. This promising result successfully demonstrates the feasibility of the specifically designed DBR/ML structure as a dynamic pressure sensor.

Asymmetrical optical microcavity structures for dynamic pressure sensing: design, fabrication, validation

Optical microcavity (OMC) structures have spectral properties that are directly related to their physical dimensions and material refractive indices. Their intrinsically fast optical response to mechanically-induced changes in these parameters makes OMCs uniquely suited for dynamic sensing when paired with a suitably fast streak camera and spectrograph. Various designs and processes of fabrication for asymmetrical OMC (AOMC) structures were investigated to optimize and assess their feasibility for dynamic sensing. Structural and material effects were studied in terms of spectral properties, structure stabilities and fabrication process. From this study, it was shown that an AOMC structure with a SiO2 cavity layer and Ag mirror layers, fabricated with thin adhesion Al2O3 layers exhibited the best structural stability and spectral properties. Under dynamic compressive loading of ~4 GPa, the structure exhibited a blueshift of 22 nm and a temporal response time of < 3.3 ns, thus demonstrating the potential of AOMC based dynamic pressure sensing.

Time-resolved spectral response of asymmetrical optical microcavity structures under laser-driven shock compression

The time-resolved spectral responses of three asymmetrical optical microcavity (AOMC) structures under laser-driven shock compression were investigated. The objective was to compare the performance of these multilayer structures and explore the potential in dynamic shock “pressure” sensing, given their unique ability to capture spatially heterogeneous pressure distributions across 2D surfaces. Different AOMC structures were fabricated, with amorphous SiO2, amorphous Al2O3, and PMMA cavity layers between deposited silver reflecting layers producing the characteristic spectral features of the structures. An experimental setup employing laser-driven shock compression was used to generate nanosecond scale pressure loads of ∼1-10 GPA, and the corresponding time-resolved spectral response and in-situ particle velocity of the AOMCs was simultaneously recorded. Each of the AOMC multilayers showed clear spectral shifts as a function of pressure with nanosecond level correlation to the independently measured veloci...

Spectral response of multilayer optical structures to dynamic loading

Distributed Bragg Reflectors and optical microcavities are multilayer optical structures with spectral properties that are intrinsically sensitive to external perturbations. With nanometer to micrometer dimensions and near instantaneous optical response, these structures show filigficant potential as the basis for meso-scale time-resolved diagnostics that can be used to probe the dynamic behavior of meso-scale heterogeneous materials. In order to characterize the optical and mechanical behavior of the multilayer structures, a coupled computational-experimental approach is followed. A theoretical analysis of the spectral response of the structures to dynamic loading is shown, along with computational simulations illustrating the observable spectral effects of 1D shock compression. Results from laser driven shock loading of prototype multilayer designs demonstrate clearly observable spectral shifts closely correlated with shock pressure, indicating that the magnitude of dynamic loading can be directly infer...