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Green emitting plastic scintillator with neutron/gamma pulse shape discrimination for fast neutron detection

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Abstract

In this report, high concentrations of dye doped advanced plastic scintillators are fabricated by bulk thermal polymerization. High soluble primary fluor 2,5-diphenyloxazole (PPO) having emission wavelength within the UV spectrum and the wavelength shifter 3-hydroxyflavone (3HF) showing emission peak at 530 nm were mixed into the styrene base matrix. The wavelength shifter eliminates the phenomenon of self-absorption, which increases the energy transfer efficiency from the primary dye to the spectral shifter. The structural confirmation was performed by XRD measurement and the surface morphology of the synthesized polystyrene-based plastic scintillators were examined using FESEM. The elemental analysis, purity of the material, chemical states and its compositions were analyzed through EDS, FT-Raman and XPS techniques, respectively. Our studies revealed the good scintillation performance of these novel clear and transparent scintillators for fast neutron detection, showing maximum emission peak around 540 nm with bright green fluorescence, fast scintillation decay under neutron and gamma excitation and good neutron/gamma pulse shape discrimination with a figure of merit of 1.6. The fabricated plastic scintillators possessed an energy linearity of more than 99.8% from the pulse spectra analysis.

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Acknowledgements

The authors gratefully acknowledge Crystal Technology Section (CTS) & X-ray & Neutron Techniques Section (X&NTS), Technical Physics Division, Bhabha Atomic Research Centre (BARC), Mumbai for providing the lab facility.

Funding

The financial support for this work was provided by SERB, India [Project sanction No: CRG/2020/003536].

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Authors and Affiliations

  1. Centre for Crystal Growth, Department of Physics, Sri Sivasubramaniya Nadar College of Engineering, 603 110, Kalavakkam, Tamilnadu, India

    Lizbeth Alex & Rajesh Paulraj

  2. Crystal Technology Section, Technical Physics Division, Bhabha Atomic Research Centre, 400085, Mumbai, India

    Sonu & Mohit Tyagi

Authors
  1. Lizbeth Alex
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  2. Rajesh Paulraj
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  3. Sonu
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Contributions

Lizbeth Alex: Investigation, Material synthesis, Data curation and analysis, Writing – original draft preparation. Rajesh Paulraj: Conceptualization, Methodology, Funding acquisition, Supervision, Project administration, Writing – review & editing. Sonu: Visualization, Validation, Data analysis. Mohit Tyagi: Visualization, Investigation, Resources, Writing – review & editing.

Corresponding author

Correspondence to Rajesh Paulraj.

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Alex, L., Paulraj, R., Sonu et al. Green emitting plastic scintillator with neutron/gamma pulse shape discrimination for fast neutron detection. J Mater Sci: Mater Electron 34, 576 (2023). https://doi.org/10.1007/s10854-023-10018-4

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