Recent developments of ion beam induced luminescence: radiation hardness study of thin film plastic scintillators

Ion beam induced luminescence (IBIL) measurements have been performed on thin film scintillators based on polyvinyltoluene (PVT) and 6FDA-DAD and BPDA-3F polyimides with H+ (1.85 MeV) and He+ (1.8-2.2 MeV) ion beams. The radiation hardness of the undoped polymers has been verified to depend mainly on the deposited energy density, polyimides exhibiting a higher resistance with respect to PVT. In PVT a new fluorescence band, attributed to the radical precursors of the network crosslinking, has been observed. The efficiency of doped polymers degradates with a higher rate, depending on the dye intrinsic lability. At high radiation fluences, the relative efficiency to NE102 of doped polyimides scintillators increases owing to the intrinsic host improved resistance.