Additive manufacturing of fine-granularity optically-isolated plastic scintillator elements. (1st October 2022)

• Record Type: Journal Article
• Authors: Berns, S.; Boillat, E.; Boyarintsev, A.; De Roeck, A.; Dolan, S.; Gendotti, A.; Grynyov, B.; Hugon, S.; Kose, U.; Kovalchuk, S.; Li, B.; Rubbia, A.; Sibilieva, T.; Sgalaberna, D.; Weber, T.; Wuthrich, J.; Zhao, X.Y.
• Is Part Of: Journal of instrumentation. Volume 17:Number 10(2022)
• Publication Date: 2022-10-01
• Subjects: Calorimeters -- dE/dx detectors -- Particle tracking detectors -- Scintillators and scintillating fibres and light guides; Scientific apparatus and instruments -- Periodicals; 502.84
• DOI: 10.1088/1748-0221/17/10/P10045
• Languages: English
• ISSNs: 1748-0221

Abstract

Abstract: Plastic scintillator detectors are used in high energy physics as well as for diagnostic imaging in medicine, beam monitoring on hadron therapy, muon tomography, dosimetry and many security applications. To combine particle tracking and calorimetry it is necessary to build detectors with three-dimensional granularity, i.e. small voxels of scintillator optically isolated from each other. Recently, the 3DET collaboration demonstrated the possibility to 3D print polystyrene-based scintillators with a light output performance close to that obtained with standard production methods. In this article, after providing a further characterization of the developed scintillators, we show the first matrix of plastic scintillator cubes optically separated by a white reflector material entirely 3D printed with fused deposition modeling. This is a major milestone towards the 3D printing of the first real particle detector. A discussion of the results as well as the next steps in the R&D is also provided.