Development of new Polysiloxane Based Liquid Scintillators
- Department of Industrial Engineering, University of Trento,Via Sommarive, 9, 38123 Trento (Italy)
- INFN, Laboratori Nazionali di Legnaro,Viale dell'Universita, 2, 35020 Legnaro - Padova (Italy)
- Department of Physics, Nevsehir Haci Bektas Veli University, Science and Art Faculty, 50300 Nevsehir (Turkey)
In the last decade, attention toward neutron detection has been growing in the scientific community, driven by new requirements in different fields of application ranging from homeland security to medical and material analysis, from research physics, to nuclear energy production. So far neutron detection, with particular attention to fast neutrons, has been mainly based on organic liquid scintillators, owing to their good efficiency and pulse shape discrimination (PSD) capability. Most of these liquids have however some main drawbacks given by toxicity, flammability, volatility and sensitivity to dissolved oxygen that limits the duration and the quality of their performances with worse handiness and increased costs. Phenyl-substituted polysiloxanes could address most of these issues, being characterized by low toxicity, low volatility and low flammability. Their optical properties can be tailored by changing the phenyl distribution and concentration thus allowing to increase the solubility of organic dyes, to modify the fluorescence spectra and to vary the refractive index of the medium. Furthermore, polysiloxanes have been recently exploited for the production of plastic scintillators with very good chemical and thermal stability and very good radiation hardness and the development of polysiloxane liquid scintillators could allow to combine these interesting properties with the supremacy of liquid scintillators as regarding PSD over plastics. For these reasons, the properties of several phenyl-substituted polysiloxane with different phenyl amounts and different viscosities have been investigated, with particular attention to the scintillation response and the pulse shape discrimination capability, and the results of the investigation are reported in this work. More in details, the scintillation light yield towards gamma rays ({sup 60}Co and {sup 137}Cs) of several polysiloxane liquids has been analyzed and compared with the light yield of a commercial non-toxic liquid scintillator (EJ309). The results have been related to the optical characterization of these materials, especially as regarding the fluorescence response, and the best performing material (1,1,5,5-Tetraphenyl 1,3,3,5-Tetramethyl Trisiloxane) showed a scintillation light-yield only slightly lower than EJ309, proving to be a promising candidate for the production of an efficient polysiloxane based liquid scintillator. The results as regarding the neutron-gamma pulse shape discrimination capability of the best performing materials are also reported in this work and the scintillation decay time of these materials are compared to the results of fluorescence lifetime analysis. PSD tests have been performed at CN accelerator in Legnaro National Laboratories with a 2.2 MeV pulsed neutron beam using TOF procedure and the pulses have been analyzed in order to evidence the PSD capability of every sample. The reported results pave the way to the development of a new promising class of non-toxic liquid scintillating materials for neutron detection, with good light output and interesting PSD characteristics. (authors)
- Research Organization:
- Institute of Electrical and Electronics Engineers - IEEE, 3 Park Avenue, 17th Floor, New York, N.Y. 10016-5997 (United States)
- OSTI ID:
- 22531246
- Report Number(s):
- ANIMMA-2015-IO-192; TRN: US16V0392102187
- Resource Relation:
- Conference: ANIMMA 2015: 4. International Conference on Advancements in Nuclear Instrumentation Measurement Methods and their Applications, Lisboa (Portugal), 20-24 Apr 2015; Other Information: Country of input: France
- Country of Publication:
- United States
- Language:
- English
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Related Subjects
CESIUM 137
COBALT 60
CONCENTRATION RATIO
DISSOLVED GASES
EFFICIENCY
FLUORESCENCE SPECTROSCOPY
GAMMA RADIATION
LIFETIME
LIQUID SCINTILLATION DETECTORS
LIQUID SCINTILLATORS
MEV RANGE
NEUTRON DETECTION
NEUTRON DETECTORS
ORGANIC POLYMERS
PLASTIC SCINTILLATORS
PULSE SHAPERS
RADIATION HARDNESS
REFRACTIVE INDEX
SENSITIVITY
SILOXANES