Development of UV-cured plastic scintillators containing 9-vinylcarbazole having high scintillation light yields

Abstract We have developed UV-cured plastic scintillators having high scintillation light yields. We aimed to increase the number of electron-hole pairs produced by the energy of ionizing radiation by adding 9-vinylcarbazole as the host. We prepared the samples with different 9-vinylcarbazole concentrations. Based on the PL excitation spectra, we consider that 9-vinylcarbazole added in the sample scintillators remains as monomer and that the excitation energy is transferred from 9-vinylcarbazole to DPO as the primary fluorescent molecule. The scintillation light yields of the samples containing 9-vinylcarbazole at 16 wt% were 9600 photons/MeV. These yields were 92 % of the yield of EJ-204, which is a commercially available plastic scintillator used for large-scale detectors in high-energy and particle physics.