Scientific assistants Alise Podelinska and Viktorija Pankratova from the Spectroscopy Lab, and the head of the laboratory and its leading researcher Anatolijs Šarakovskis participated in experimental measurements of scintillator materials under vacuum ultraviolet excitation at FinEstBeAMS Beamline in the MAX IV Laboratory, Lund University, Sweden.
This event allowed the participants to master new methods for characterization of wide bandgap materials, including luminescence, luminescence excitation and luminescence decay measurements in ultraviolet, visible and vacuum ultraviolet spectral ranges. These measurements offer indispensable information about the bandgap, intrinsic defects, defect generation, and possible applications of optical materials for high energy radiation applications such as scintillators. Significant is the possibility of acquiring the excitation spectra with ultrahigh-resolution (<1.5 meV), which is essential in researching rare-earth-doped materials.
The participation in the experiments showed the advantages of synchrotron radiation compared to conventional light sources and highlighted the use of these facilities for new research opportunities and future collaboration.
FinEstBeAMS is a material and atmospheric science beamline at the MAX IV 1.5 GeV storage ring. It provides ultraviolet and soft X-ray radiation with precisely controlled and widely variable parameters. The beamline has two branches: one branch is dedicated to ultra-high vacuum studies of surfaces and interfaces and the other to gas-phase experiments and photoluminescence in solids. The range of research extends from the electronic structure studies of free particles (atoms, molecules, clusters and atmospheric particles) in the gas phase and on surfaces to formation analysis and nanoscale characterization of surfaces and interfaces.
