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Spin coating of TPB film on acrylic substrate and measurement of its wavelength shifting efficiency

Nuclear Science and Techniques volume 31, Article number: 28 (2020) Cite this article

Abstract

Scintillation light from a liquid noble gas during a neutrino or dark matter experiment lies typically within the vacuum ultraviolet region and might be strongly absorbed by surrounding materials such as light guides or photomultipliers. Tetraphenyl butadiene (TPB) is a fluorescent material, acts as a wavelength shifter, and can turn UV light into visible light at a peak wavelength of approximately 425 nm, enabling the light signals to be easily detected during physics studies. Compared with a traditional TPB coating method using vapor deposition, we propose an alternative technique applying a spin-coating procedure to facilitate the development of neutrino and dark matter detectors. This article introduces a method to fabricate a TPB film on an acrylic substrate by using a spin-coating method, reports the measurements of the sample film thickness and roughness, demonstrates the reemission spectrum, and quantifies the wavelength shifting efficiency.

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Notes

  1. The measurement was conducted on November 1, 2019. The raw SEM image shows the wrong date owing to a software issue.

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Acknowledgements

This study was strongly supported by the Center for Fundamental Physics Laboratory in SYSU. We appreciate the help given by Prof. Han Shen and the technicians in his team. Many thanks to Prof. Yue Zheng and Prof. Wen-Peng Zhu for their help with the sample measurements using the SEM.

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Author notes

  1. Hang Yang and Zi-Feng Xu have contributed equally to this work.

Authors and Affiliations

  1. School of Physics, Sun Yat-sen University, Guangzhou, 510275, China

    Hang Yang, Zi-Feng Xu & Jian Tang

  2. School of Chemistry, Sun Yat-sen University, Guangzhou, 510275, China

    Yi Zhang

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  1. Hang Yang
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  2. Zi-Feng Xu
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Corresponding author

Correspondence to Jian Tang.

Additional information

This study was supported in part by the Guangdong Basic and Applied Basic Research Foundation (No. 2019A1515012216), the National Natural Science Foundation of China (No. 11505301) and the Innovation Training Program for bachelor students at the School of Physics in SYSU.

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Yang, H., Xu, ZF., Tang, J. et al. Spin coating of TPB film on acrylic substrate and measurement of its wavelength shifting efficiency. NUCL SCI TECH 31, 28 (2020). https://doi.org/10.1007/s41365-020-0737-5

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  • DOI: https://doi.org/10.1007/s41365-020-0737-5

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