Synthesis and development of a vinyltoluene-based plastic scintillator

In this paper, the effects of some synthesis parameters such as type and concentration of primary and secondary dopants, temperature and time of polymerization on luminescence properties of a vinyltoluene based plastic scintillator are investigated. Thermal polymerization was used to polymerize the samples. After synthesizing, the samples were cut into dimensions of 2.5 cm diameter by 1 cm thickness and were evaluated compared to the commercial sample BC-400. The results of gamma-ray spectroscopy under cobalt-60 and cesium-137 sources as well as photoluminescence spectroscopy showed that some synthesized plastic scintillators have a higher light yield with respect to commercial one. The measurements showed that the increase of dopant larger than optimum concentration degraded the performance of plastic scintillator due to concentration quenching. It was also found that pre-treatment at the temperature of 78 °C led to about 6% light yield loss compared to direct treatment at 160 °C, due to more non-uniform structure acquired during former treatment which might attenuate the efficient transfer of energy.