Effect of fluorescent dyes on the scintillation efficiency, improved light yield and radiation hardness of polystyrene-based plastic scintillator: a comparative study

Abstract

A series of high-quality polystyrene-based plastic scintillators with fluorescent dyes such as b-PBD, p-TP and DPB as dopants have been synthesized by thermal bulk polymerization in an in-house developed muffle furnace to analyse the effect of dyes on their scintillation performance. The comparative studies revealed that b-PBD is the efficient fluorescent dye for the polystyrene-based plastic scintillator and shows better performance with high fluorescence intensity, short decay time of 3.3 and 6.2 ns under γ-ray and fast neutron excitation, significant radiation resistance and the light yield is found to be 50% of that of stilbene crystal.