Low energy heavy ion detection with the plastic scintillator NE102E

Detection capabilities of low cost plastic scintillation detector NE102E have been explored for slow heavy ions and carbon clusters. The carbon clusters are produced in a graphite hollow cathode based duoplasmatron and the mass analysis performed by a compact E x B velocity filter. The energy of the heavy ion beams of C-70(+), C-60(+), C-24(+), Xe-2(+), Xe+ and Ar+ is varied between 1 and 10 keV. The experimental data suggests that the scientillation response of NE102E is related to the electronic stopping and after a critical longitudinal range of about 80 Angstrom the scintillator's response becomes linear. (C) 2003 Elsevier Science B.V. All rights reserved.