Institute of Metallurgy and Materials Science, Polish Academy of Sciences
Institute of Physics, Jagiellonian University
Development of novel plastic scintillators
based on polyvinyltoluene
for the hybrid J-PET/MR tomograph
Anna Wieczorek
Doctoral Dissertation
prepared in the Institute of Physics, Jagiellonian
University
Supervisor: prof. dr hab. Paweł Moskal
Institute of Physics, Jagiellonian University
Co-supervisor: dr Andrzej Kochanowski
Faculty of Chemistry, Jagiellonian University
Kraków, 2017
2
Abstract
A novel plastic scintillator, referred to as J-PET scintillator, has been developed for
the application in the digital positron emission tomography (PET).
The novelty of the
concept lies in application of the 2-(4-styrylphenyl)benzoxazole as a wavelength shifter.
To date, the chemical compound has not been used as scintillator additive. A role of
wavelength shifter is to shift the scintillation spectrum towards longer wavelengths making
it more suitable for applications in scintillators of long strips
geometry because of larger
attenuation length, and light detection with digital silicon photomultipliers.
In the thesis method of scintillators development and characterization of their
properties are presented as well as synthesis method of the novel wavelength shifter. The
optimal concentration of the novel wavelength shifter was established by maximizing the
light output.
Performance of scintillator, considering light emission spectrum,
light
emission efficiency, rising and decay times of the scintillation
pulses were analyzed and
compared to state of the art commercially available plastic scintillators. Structure of J-PET
scintillators was studied and discussed.
