Influence of Fluorescent Dopants on the Vat Photopolymerization of Acrylate-based Plastic Scintillators

Published

July 3, 2023

Author(s)

Thomas Kolibaba, Jason Killgore, Caleb Chandler, Dominique Porcincula, Michael Ford, Benjamin Fein-Ashley, Jason Brodsky, Alan Sellinger

Abstract

Plastic scintillators, a class of solid-state materials used for radiation detection, were additively manufactured with vat photopolymerization. The photopolymer resins consisted of a primary dopant and a secondary dopant dissolved in a bisphenol A ethoxylate diacrylate-based matrix. The absorptive dopants significantly influence important print parameters of light penetration depth, which decreased by >5×, and critical energy dose, which increased by 3×. The primary dopant 2,5-diphenyloxazole had minimal impact on the printing process even at 25 % by mass of the resin. Working curve measurements, which relate energy dose to cure depth, were performed as a function of feature size to further assess the influence of dopants, showing that features below 150 µm had increases in critical energy dose while all resins maintained separation of printed features in line gratings with 50 µm of separation. Printed scintillator monoliths were compared to scintillators cast by traditional molding, demonstrating that the layer-by-layer printing process does not decrease light output. A maximum light output of 31 % of a commercial plastic scintillator benchmark and pulse shape discrimination figure of merit of 1.33 were achieved when printing resin with 20 %by mass 2,5-diphenyloxazole as the primary dopant and 0.1 %by mass 9,9-dimethyl-2,7-distyrylfluorene as the secondary dopant.

Citation

Additive Manufacturing

Pub Type

Journals

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Keywords

Additive manufacturing, plastic scintillator, digital light processing, acrylate, vat photo-polymerization, fluorophore, absorption, radiation detection

Citation

Kolibaba, T. , Killgore, J. , Chandler, C. , Porcincula, D. , Ford, M. , Fein-Ashley, B. , Brodsky, J. and Sellinger, A. (2023), Influence of Fluorescent Dopants on the Vat Photopolymerization of Acrylate-based Plastic Scintillators, Additive Manufacturing, [online], https://tsapps.nist.gov/publication/get_pdf.cfm?pub_id=936236 (Accessed October 7, 2025)