New and improved phoswich detectors manufactured by a heat press technique

Abstract

A technique has been developed to produce plastic scintillator phoswich detectors with large areas, thin ΔE layers with thickness uniformity better than 3%, and no “dead” layer between the ΔE and E scintillators. A good signal separation for hydrogen isotopes and for elements with Z = 1 to 11 has been demonstrated in two different tests with a ΔE layer as thin as 0.7 mm. The elemental resolution most probably extends beyond Z = 11. The light-particle energy threshold of such a phoswich detector is only 7.5 MeV/u, ideal for reaction studies in the 10–40 MeV/u energy range available at the TASCC (Tandem Accelerator and SuperConducting Cyclotron) facility at Chalk River Nuclear Laboratories.