Download Page as PDF

Scintillator Crystals > Plastic Scintialltor Materials

Marketech offers high quality polyvinyltolune plastic scintillators for a wide range of applications. We cast and finish slabs and sheets to your exacting specifications.

Physical and Scintillation Characteristics of Plastic Scintillators

MKT- 500 Plastic Scintillator combines the two important properties of long attenuation length and fast timing and is therefore particularly useful for time-of-flight systems using scintillators greater than one meter long. Typical measurements of 4 meter optical attenuation length are achieved in strips of cast sheet in which a representative size is 2cm x 20cm x 300cm.

The combination of long attenuation length, high light output, and emission spectrum well matched to the common photomultipliers recommends MKT-500 as the detector of choice for many industrial applications such as gauging and environmental protection where high sensitivity of signal uniformity are critical operating requirements.

MKT-504 Plastic Scintillator provides the highest scintillation efficiency of any plastic scintillator and delivers excellent combination of high speed and good attenuation length. It is thus particularly well suited for high performance detector systems for nuclear and high-energy physics research. Its emission wavelength near 400 nm couples ideally with bialkali phototubes while still being long enough to be effectively used with UVT light guides. Hence, its variant, MKT-504A is particularly well suited for use with green wavelength-shifting light guide materials.

MKT-508 Plastic Scintillator is noted for achieving long optical attenuation length and is intended specifically for use in large sizes where timing is of secondary importance and uniformity of light collection is paramount. Typical measurements of 4 meter optical attenuation length are achieved in strips of cast sheet in which a representative size is 2 cm x 20 cm x 300 cm.

The MKT-508 possesses the longest wavelength emission of the commonly available blue scintillators and should be considered for applications requiring complex or extended light guides. Additionally, the long emission spectrum provides additional resistance to radiation damage of which the most common symptom is increased optical attenuation at short wavelengths.

MKT-512 Plastic Scintillator is a general-purpose scintillator suitable for use in geometries ranging from very thin films to thick cast sheets, rods, and ingots. MKT-512 embodies the formula and offers excellent overall characteristics. Applications include industrial and health physics measurement of alpha, beta, gamma, and neutron radiation as well as in numerous medical instruments and scientific research ranging from low background shields in nuclear physics to space-borne astrophysics systems. The MKT-512 is best utilized in sizes up to 100 cm long and its emission spectrum couples well with common blue-sensitive phototubes and also sufficiently long to work well with standard acrylic light guides.

MKT-532 Plastic Scintillator is intended for very fast timing applications or when very high pulse pair resolution is required. In all such counting situations the scintillator must be used in a small size, typically with the largest scintillator dimension less than 10 cm, to minimize photon scattering effects. The short wavelength of MKT-532 couples well with standard bialkali phototubes. Also, the unique formula of MKT-532 ultra fast counting using quenched versions of this material, MKT-532Q. The most common quenching being with 0.5% benzophenone, achieving 700 ps pulse width and light output od 19% anthracene.

Back To Top