High-throughput growth of organic scintillating single crystal fibers for neutron/gamma pulse shape discrimination

Abstract

The organic scintillation single crystals grown by conventional methods typically exhibit intrinsic crystal habits and lack machinability to be processed into suitable forms to match different application scenarios. Here, a mold-embedded growth (MEG) method is reported for the batch growth of organic scintillating single crystal fibers (SCFs). The SCFs, each embedded in a capillary glass shell, manifest homogeneous orientation, high crystallinity and satisfactory optical properties. Moreover, they can be directly integrated into pixelated scintillator arrays with various shapes. As exemplified by the organic scintillation crystal of 9,10-diphenylanthrance (DPA)-doped p-terphenyl, the pixelated fiber array shows higher performance in neutron detection compared to the monolithic organic single crystal, with the figure of merit (FOM) value of 3.684 versus 2.824 for neutron/gamma pulse shape discrimination (PSD), which could be attributed to the light-guiding effect and lower lateral optical crosstalk in the array composed of SCFs.