Highly lead-loaded red plastic scintillators as an X-ray imaging system for the Laser Méga Joule

The scope of this project intends to record spatially resolved images of core shape and size of a DT microballoon during Inertial Confinement Fusion (ICF) experiments at Laser Mega Joule facility (LMJ). We need to develop an X-ray imaging system which can operate in the radiative background generated by an ignition shot of ICF. The scintillator is a part of the imaging system and has to gather a compromise of scintillating properties (scintillating efficiency, decay time, emission wavelength) so as to both operate in the hard radiative environment and to allow the acquisition of spatially resolved images. Inorganic scintillators cannot be used because no compromise can be found regarding the expected scintillating properties, most of them are not fast enough and emit blue light. Organic scintillators are generally fast, but present low X-ray absorption in the 10 to 40 keV range, that does not permit the acquisition of spatially resolved images. To this aim, we have developed highly lead-loaded and red-fluorescent fast plastic scintillators. Such a combination is not currently available via scintillator suppliers, since they propose only blue-fluorescent plastic scintillators doped with up to 12%w Pb. Thus, incorporation ratio up to 27%w Pb has been reached in our laboratory, which can afford a plastic scintillator with an outstanding Zeff close to 50. X-rays in the 10 to 40 keV range can thus be detected with a higher probability of photoelectric effect than for classic organic scintillators, such as NE102. The strong orange-red fluorescence can be filtered, so that we can eliminate residual Cerenkov light, generated by γ-ray absorption in glass parts of the imaging system. Decay times of our scintillators evaluated under UV excitation were estimated to be in the range 10 to 13 ns.