A SrBPO5:Eu2+ storage phosphor for neutron imaging

The phosphor material SrBPO5:Eu2+ has been investigated for two-dimensional imaging for a pulsed-neutron source. We found that this phosphor itself shows photostimulated luminescence by illumination with 635-nm laser light after neutron irradiation without adding any neutron-sensitive materials such as Gd. The neutron sensitivity was proportional to E-0.5, where E is the neutron energy. The neutron sensitivity was also increased by using enriched boron instead of natural boron. The S-gamma/S-n ratio of this phosphor using enriched boron was better than that of a commercially available imaging plate, where S-gamma and S-n are the gamma and neutron sensitivities, respectively.