Characteristics of 3D Printed Plastic Scintillator

Digital Light Processing (DLP) 3D printing technique can be a powerful tool to fabricate plastic scintillator with a geometrically desired shape in innovatively fast time. Plastic scintillator with the size of 30 mm × 30 mm × 10 mm was fabricated by using the plastic resin and the DLP 3D printer (ASIGA, Pico2HD). The characteristics of decay time, energy resolution, intrinsic detection efficiency were analyzed and compared between the fabricated 3D printing plastic scintillator and a commercial plastic scintillator BC408 (Saint-Gobain Crystal). Decay time profile of the tested plastic scintillators was measured for 137Cs Compton maximum electron 477 keV by using a modified time correlated single photon counting (TCSPC) setup. The time profile was fitted by reconvolution function, and each decay time component and contribution was analyzed. For energy resolution of plastic scintillator, the Gaussian spectrum for 137Cs Compton maximum electron 477 keV was selectively measured by using the γ-γ coincidence experimental setup. As a result, it was confirmed that the 3D printing plastic scintillator showed average decay time 15.6 ns and energy resolution 15.4%. These characteristics demonstrates the feasibility of 3D printing plastic scintillator as a radiation detector.