Photo image processing analysis of electron beam irradiation on a new liquid scintillator based on alcohol

Abstract

Liquid scintillator is widely used in various fields. This paper proposes a new base material, a mixture of alcohol and water for liquid scintillator and introduces photo image analysis to investigate electron beam irradiation on the new alcohol-based liquid scintillator. A possibility of using alcohol as a new detection solution in particle detector is briefly described. Alcohol has good solubility for fluor, is biodegradable and has low toxicity. The development of an alcohol-based liquid scintillator was investigated and some physical and optical properties of the alcohol-based liquid scintillator were measured. The energy exchange process that the absorption spectrum overlaps with the emission spectrum was seen in our alcohol-based liquid scintillator. To date, there have been no R&D studies elsewhere for use of alcohol-based liquid scintillator in particle detectors. As an application, we introduce a new measurement technique where range measurements were achieved after irradiating an alcohol-based liquid scintillator with electron beam energies of 6–12 MeV. By analyzing the range images taken by digital camera, or even mobile phone camera, it was possible to find out the fluor component dissolved in the alcohol-based liquid scintillator. This method has sufficient potential as it enables us to estimate wavelengths in the visible region without using an expensive spectrophotometer. These results can be used in medical imaging applications for the treatment of tumors or cancers where irradiation by electron beams takes place. Furthermore, alcohol-based LS could be used in future, next generation particle detectors.