Synthesis of plastic scintillation microspheres: Evaluation of scintillators

Crosslinked plastic scintillators: A new detection system for radioactivity measurement in organic and aggressive media

“…The values obtained in water medium were similar to that commonly achieved using PS microspheres [23,30,31]. In the aggressive media studied, detection efficiency values similar to that obtained in water were observed.…”

“…The common composition of a PS includes a styrene monomer with approximately 3% PPO as the fluorescent solute and 0.05% POPOP as the secondary fluorescent solute [1,23]. To obtain a resistant PS, the inclusion of a crosslinker is required [14].…”

“…Five increasing ratios of PPO ranging from 1 to 15% were studied. Table 1 (entries [21][22][23][24][25][26][27][28][29][30] shows that the detection efficiency increases and the spectrum position shifts slightly to higher energies when the proportion of PPO increases up to 6%. After this limit, the detection efficiency remains constant.…”

Polystyrene based sub-micron scintillating particles produced by supercritical anti-solvent precipitation

“…radiation protection, high-energy particle physics, etc). When measuring with plastic scintillators, the energy of the radioactive particle or radiation is transferred to the polymeric matrix whereas the fluorescent solutes (primary and secondary) are responsible to convert this energy deposited into photons that are detected by means of photomultiplier tubes [1,2]. Plastic scintillators produced in form of microspheres with a diameter ranging from ten to hundreds micrometers, named Plastic Scintillation microspheres (PSm) [3], can be applied in the field of the radioactivity measurements and more specifically in the routine determination of beta and alpha emitting radionuclides in preparation from polymers using organic solvent extraction/evaporation [10]; microfluidic devices [11], electro-spray technique [12] and supercritical fluids [13].…”

“…Plastic scintillators produced in form of microspheres with a diameter ranging from ten to hundreds micrometers, named Plastic Scintillation microspheres (PSm) [3], can be applied in the field of the radioactivity measurements and more specifically in the routine determination of beta and alpha emitting radionuclides in preparation from polymers using organic solvent extraction/evaporation [10]; microfluidic devices [11], electro-spray technique [12] and supercritical fluids [13]. Organic solvent evaporation/extraction methodology has been adapted successfully for the synthesis of polystyrene based PSm using dichloromethane (DCM) as the organic solvent of the polymer and the fluorescent solutes, obtaining spherical microparticles with a diameter around 70 m and a yield of 100% [2]. However, when particles ranged in the sub-micron size are the target, this methodology presents limitations.…”