New Fluors for Radiation Tolerant Scintillators

The new generation of high energy accelerators - LHC, CEBAF, RHIC - have encouraged the development of more robust plastic scintillators. Monitors and detectors for these machines will require plastic scintillator with greater radiation tolerance. Although the major cause of radiation damage in plastic scintillator is the creation of color centers in the base plastic, the most successful approach to date has been to utilize fluors which circumvent, rather than solve, the radiation damage problem. Two techniques have been found to be useful. First, increase the concentration of fluors so that the optical density of the fluors for absorption of the scintillation photons remains much higher than the optical density of the radiation induced color centers. Second, use fluors which emit at longer wavelengths than traditional fluors, thus avoiding radiation induced color centers. The present work attempts to meet these requirements by modifying the structure of the 3-HF molecule.