First performance test of newly developed plastic scintillator for radiation detection

We present a plastic scintillator, developed in collaboration with Carlit Holdings Co., Ltd., that is fabricated using a liquid parent material cured at room temperature by adding a hardener. The new scintillator can incorporate heat-labile functional materials such as gadolinium to enhance neutron sensitivity. The characteristics of the new scintillator, in particular the light yield and attenuation length, were evaluated using a 90Sr β-ray source. The light yield was measured 7% Anthracene on the basis of a comparison with commercially available scintillator (BC-408) at a distance of 18 cm from the photodetector surface. This light yield is dependent on the distance between the luminous point and the photodetector because of light attenuation. The attenuation length of the Gd-doped scintillator was about 50 cm.