Fabrication and Characterization of Plastic Scintillators with PPO and Coumarin in an Epoxy Matrix
AUG 14, 2026
JURPA 2026 Cover Image.
Abstract. We fabricate plastic scintillators with varying concentrations of 2,5-diphenyloxazole (PPO) as a primary fluor and 7-diethylamino-4-methylcoumarin (coumarin) as a wavelength shifter and characterize their light yield. We demonstrate that effective scintillators can be made, and in one sample we achieve 27% higher light yield than in a commercially available scintillator. However, we also show that spatial variability has a significant impact on measured light yield. We show that higher concentrations of PPO and coumarin generally lead to higher light yields. We also demonstrate that the fabricated plastic scintillators can successfully detect muons in a CosmicWatch detector.
