Efficient plastic scintillators utilizing phosphorescent dopants

The authors demonstrate improved light yield from plastic scintillators utilizing a phosphorescent dopant to collect both singlet and triplet excitations created by ionizing radiation. They specifically considered poly(vinyltoluene) and poly(9-vinylcarbazole) doped with an Ir phosphor. They present the spectral, temporal, and integrated yield responses as a function of dopant concentration to pulses of 10 keV electrons. Both doped plastics yield a maximum light output of similar to 200% of anthracene with decay times < 850 ns. High light yield was obtained for Ir element fractions up to similar to 10 wt %, implying that these scintillators may be useful for gamma detection. (c) 2007 American Institute of Physics.