Interest in plastic scintillators for detection of special nuclear materials (SNMs) has piqued in recent years due to their low cost and scalability. To accurately identify SNMs, a detector must be able to distinguish between neutron and gamma radiation. Both SNMs and benign materials can emit gamma rays, but only SNMs emit neutrons. Plastic scintillators can distinguish between the two types of radiation via a technique called pulse shape discrimination (PSD) by incorporating &gt;20 wt% of 2,5 diphenyloxazole (PPO) in a polyvinyl toluene (PVT) matrix. However, producing high quality scintillators is an approximately 5-day thermally-initiated radical polymerization process. To reduce polymerization time and temperature, we present a proof-of-concept 1-day photopolymerization process using methacrylate cross-linkers in a PVT matrix. Plastic scintillators up to 20g in size produced via photopolymerization had comparable mechanical properties and radiation response to thermally polymerized cross-linked samples.

Plastic scintillators with efficient light output and pulse shape discrimination produced via photo-initiated polymerization

2019 Spring National Meeting

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