Plastic scintillator for pulse shape neutrons and gamma quanta discrimination

•Plastic scintillator for efficient n/γ discrimination is described.•Pulse shape discrimination is occurred due to direct transformation of triplet excitation energy.•The scintillator contains two activation centers with different lifetimes.•Eu-containing complexes were used as activators.•With 3.0 wt% of Eu[DBM]3Phen, this PS provides reliable discrimination with FOM = 1.37.

This study describes a new plastic scintillator for pulse shape n-γ discrimination. The scintillator contains two activation centers with different life spans. The first activator collects the singlet excitation energy of a polymer base, and the second activator utilizes triplet excitation states. We utilized 1,4-dimethyl-9,10-diphenylanthracene (DMDPA) and tris(dibenzoylmethide) (1,10-phenanthroline)Europium(III) (Eu[DBM]3Phen) as activators. The figure of merit for this scintillator is 1.37, which is sufficient for reliable n-γ discrimination.