Development of a New Class of Scintillating Fibres with Very Short Decay Time and High Light Yield

Abstract

We present first studies of a new class of scintillating fibres which are characterised by very short decay times and high light yield. The fibres are based on a novel type of luminophores admixed to a polystyrene core matrix. These so-called Nanostructured Organosilicon Luminophores (NOL) have high photoluminescense quantum yield and decay times just above 1 ns. A blue and a green emitting prototype fibre with 250 µm diameter were produced and characterised in terms of attenuation length, ionisation light yield, decay time and tolerance to x-ray irradiation. The well-established Kuraray SCSF-78 and SCSF-3HF fibres were taken as references. Even though the two prototype fibres mark just an intermediate step in an ongoing development, their performance is already on a competitive level. In particular, their decay time constants are about a factor of two shorter than the fastest known fibres, which makes them promising candidates for time critical applications. K: Scintillators, scintillation and light emission processes (solid, gas and liquid scintillators); Calorimeters; Particle tracking detectors; Timing detectors 1Corresponding author.

The Mu3e scintillating fiber timing detector

“…The light yield is measured with respect to the center of the ribbon (150 mm from the edge). As can be noticed the Kuraray SCSF-78 and NOL-11 [6] fibers provide the highest light yields. We selected the 250 μm diameter multiclad round scintillating fibers from Kuraray, type SCSF-78MJ.…”

Structured Scintillators for Efficient Radiation Detection

“…For example, Borshchev et al demonstrated a promising fiber-derived structured scintillator with a short decay time and a high light yield. [135] Efficient activators and a special spectral shifter called nanostructured organosilicon luminophores were admixed to the styrene monomer and copolymerized as a cylindrical core rod. Then, the as-made corerod was dressed in two cylinders and drawn into multicladding fibers in a heating furnace.…”

Atmospheric muons as an imaging tool

“…Plastic scintillators can also be shaped as thin fibres with square or circular section with typical transverse size of 1 mm 2 [100], greatly improving the spatial resolution at the cost of a much larger number of readout channels. Scintillating fibre planes are used in SM [91], coupled to multi-anode photo-multipliers (MAPMT) capable of reading out whole bundle of fibres with the necessary amplification.…”