Influence of bismuth loading in polystyrene-based plastic scintillators for low energy gamma spectroscopy

Guillaume H. V. Bertrand (1) , Fabien Sguerra (1) , Frédérick Carrel (1) , Romain Coulon (1) , Stéphane Normand (1) , Eric Barat (2) , Thomas Dautremer (2) , Thierry Montagu (2) , Matthieu Hamel (1)

1 LCAE - Laboratoire Capteurs et Architectures Electroniques
2 LM2S - Laboratoire Modélisation et Simulation de Systèmes

This article presents the synthesis and the blend of bismuth complexes in polystyrene based plastic scintillators. A specific design has enabled the fabrication of a scintillator loaded with up to 17 wt% of bismuth. Tri-carboxylate and triaryl bismuth compounds were used to explore and understand the influence of bismuth loading on the two main criteria of plastic scintillation: light yield and detection efficiency of gamma-rays. For gamma radiation with an energy <200 keV, bismuth loaded scintillators demonstrate the ability to produce a photoelectric peak (total absorption peak) in pulse height spectra. The increase of interactions due to bismuth doping was quantified and fitted with standard models. Finally the performance of our bismuth loaded scintillators was evaluated to be better than that of a commercial lead loaded counterpart

Keywords: gamma-rays; instrumentation; nuclear instrumentation; plastic scintillator; ionizing radiation; radioactivity; polystyrene; Tri-carboxylate; triaryl bismuth

Domains: Physics [physics]; Physics [physics]; Instrumentation and Detectors [physics.ins-det]; Chemical Sciences; Inorganic chemistry; Physics [physics]; Nuclear Experiment [nucl-ex]

Guillaume H. V. Bertrand, Fabien Sguerra, Frédérick Carrel, Romain Coulon, Stéphane Normand, et al.. Influence of bismuth loading in polystyrene-based plastic scintillators for low energy gamma spectroscopy. Journal of Materials Chemistry C, 2014, 2, pp.7304-7312. ⟨10.1039/c4tc00815d⟩. ⟨cea-01825857⟩