Development of novel plastic scintillators based on polyvinyltoluene for the hybrid j-pet/mr tomograph

 
 
7.3. Timing properties of J-PET scintillator 
In order to characterize signals appearing in the J-PET scintillator, rise and decay 
times were determined. Rise time was calculated as a difference between time in 10 % and 
90 % of the signal amplitude on the leading edge: t
10-90
. To analyze the shape of signals in 
scintillators, average signals registered by photomultipliers for 0.05J-PET and BC-420 
were plotted (Fig. 20). 
-5
0
5
10
15
20
25
-1.0
-0.8
-0.6
-0.4
-0.2
0.0
Amplitu
de [
V]
Time [ns]
PM1 BC-420
PM2 BC-420
PM3 0.05J-PET
PM4 0.05J-PET
Figure 20
 
Average signals appearing in 0.05J-PET and BC-420 scintillator, normalized to the amplitude of 1 V.
PM denotes particular photomultiplier.
 
The shape of signals shown in Fig. 20 is a convolution of the temporal density 
distribution of photons emitted by the scintillator, shape of the single photoelectron signal 
generated by photomultiplier, transit time spread (TTS) and the broadening of signal due to 
the finite bandwidth of the oscilloscope. Thus in general the rise time of the light signal 
(T
scintillator
) may be extracted from the rise time of the measured electric signal (T
experiment
) 
using a following formula (3): 

---

48 
(3), 
where T
photomultiplier
, T
oscilloscope
and TTS denote the contribution to the observed rise time 
due to the form of the single photo-electron, oscilloscope bandwidth and transit time 
spread, respectively. T
eff
denotes the overall effective contributions due to the possible 
deviation of the nominal values of the above mentioned properties from the values 
provided by the manufacturers. T
photomultiplier
is equal to 1 ns [21], T
oscilloscope
calculated as
a ratio 350/bandwidth [80], is equal to 0.07 ns while TTS value is 0.27 ns [21]. Mean rise 
time of the electric signals: t
10-90
is equal to T
experiment
=1.22 ± 0.02 ns for BC-420 and
1.24 ± 0.02 ns for J-PET scintillator, respectively. This implies that within the 
measurement uncertainties the rise time of the scintillation in the J-PET scintillator is equal 
to the rise time of the BC-420 scintillator and amounts to 0.50 ns [12].
Although the rise time of 0.05J-PET and BC-420 scintillators have the same values, 
there is a slight difference in their decay time visible even in signals shapes in
Fig. 20. Spectrum of 0.05J-PET is broaden in the region of the trailing edge in comparison 
to spectrum of BC-420 scintillator. This suggests that the difference in decay time values 
in both scintillators will be noticeable. 
In ternary plastic scintillators the distribution of the time of photon emission 
followed by the interaction of the gamma quantum at time Θ, is given by
formula 4 [81] [82]: 
(4). 
The Gaussian term with the standard deviation σ reflects the rate of energy transfer to the 
primary solute, whereas t
r
and t
d
denote the average time of the energy transfer to the 
wavelength shifter and decay time of the final light emission, respectively. K stands for the 
normalization constant. 
Decay time of signals in plastic scintillators was determined by fitting sum of 
functions given by formula 4 and formula 5 [83]: 

---

49 
(5), 
where N, 
, 
and 
denote fitting parameters, f
exp
- exponent function and f
Gauss
denotes 
the Gauss function.
The formula consisting of the sum of functions given by formula 4 and 5 was fitted 
to averaged signals registered by particular photomultipliers. The fit is shown in Fig. 21.