Growth and characterization of Ce-doped YAG and LuAG fibers A. Djebli a, b, * , F. Boudjada a, b , K. Pauwels c, d , V. Kononets a, e , G. Patton a , A. Benaglia c, f , M. Lucchini c , F. Moretti a , O. Sidletskiy d , C. Dujardin a , P. Lecoq c , E. Auffray c , K. Lebbou a a Institut Lumi ere Mati ere, UMR5306 Universit e Lyon1-CNRS, Villeurbanne Cedex, France b Institut de Physique, Laboratoire de cristallographie, Universit e Des Fr eres Mentouri Constantine 1, Constantine, Algeria c European Organization for Nuclear Research, Geneva, Switzerland d University of Milano-Bicocca, Piazza dell’Ateneo Nuovo 1, Milano, 20125, Italy e Institute for Scintillation Materials of NASU, Kharkiv, Ukraine f Princeton University, Priceton, New-Jersey, 08544, USA article info Article history: Received 30 June 2016 Received in revised form 7 September 2016 Accepted 8 September 2016 Available online xxx Keywords: YAG LuAG Fibers Scintillation Growth m-PD abstract Undoped and Ce-doped Lu 3 Al 5 O 12 (LuAG) and Y 3 Al 5 O 12 (YAG) single crystal fibers were grown by the micro-pulling down technique (m-PD) with a purpose to fit the design of new dual-readout calorimeter planned to operate in future experiences of high energy physics. Fibers up to 20 cm in length and 1 mm in diameter were grown along [111] direction. Based on the measurements of the attenuation length along the fibers, the growth conditions to improve the fibers quality were selected. Our results showed that the grown fibers have the capability to be used for future detectors. © 2016 Elsevier B.V. All rights reserved. 1. Introduction Currently various scintillator materials have attracted much interest due to their importance for research at high energy ex- periments, space exploration, nuclear medicine and high technol- ogy industrial applications [1e3]. Each application has its own requirements and very often even well-known composition or technique needs to be newly investigated or adapted. Different single crystal materials such as garnets Y 3 Al 5 O 12 (YAG) [4], Lu 3 Al 5 O 12 (LuAG) [5,6], oxyorthosilicates Lu 2 SiO 5, Lu 2-x Y x SiO 5 (LSO,LYSO) [7e9] and Y 2 SiO 5 (YSO) [10] have been intensively studied. Among various inorganic crystalline materials, we choose Ce þ3 doped YAG and LuAG compositions for their optical and ra- diation hardness properties. Our previous study showed the improvement possibilities of undoped and Ce-doped LuAG single crystal fibers [5,6]. The atten- uation length results were improved by the selection of the best growth pulling rate, heat control and activator concentration. The post growth annealing allowed improving the attenuation length up to length of 1 m. The calorimeter granularity might be improved by 1 mm fibers diameter of LuAG or YAG with comparable physical properties. However the similarity, the features of the growth methods espe- cially for doped materials play an important role for the final result. Basically, activator or admixtures are more concentrated at the periphery of the fibers. The surface layer impact of thinner fibers might reduce the attenuation length, that is the reason why we investigate the growth of 1 mm diameter fibers. Ce-doped Y 3 Al 5 O 12 (YAG:Ce) fiber was reported in the literature as a fast oxide scintillator [11,12]. The density of YAG is 4.56 g/cm 3 and its effective atomic number Z is 35. The emission spectrum at room temperature is peaked around 540 nm. Because of the cost of lutetium oxide, YAG is more cheaper than LuAG, so the YAG:Ce is a promising candidate to substitute LuAG:Ce composition. In this paper, we report the scintillation properties of LuAG:Ce and YAG:Ce garnet single crystal fibers of 1 mm diameter grown by m-PD technique. * Corresponding author. E-mail address: Abdelghani.djebli@univ-lyon1.fr (A. Djebli). Contents lists available at ScienceDirect Optical Materials journal homepage: www.elsevier.com/locate/optmat http://dx.doi.org/10.1016/j.optmat.2016.09.028 0925-3467/© 2016 Elsevier B.V. All rights reserved. Optical Materials xxx (2016) 1e3 Please cite this article in press as: A. Djebli, et al., Growth and characterization of Ce-doped YAG and LuAG fibers, Optical Materials (2016), http:// dx.doi.org/10.1016/j.optmat.2016.09.028