title: Crosslinked plastic scintillators: a new detection system for radioactivity measurement in organic and aggressive media.
abstract: The measurement of radioactive solutions containing organic or aggressive media may cause stability problems in liquid and plastic scintillation (PS) techniques. In the case of PS, this can be overcome by adding a crosslinker to the polymer structure. The objectives of this study are to synthesise a suitable crosslinked plastic scintillator (C-PS) for radioactivity determination in organic and aggressive media. The results indicated that an increase in the crosslinker content reduces the detection efficiency and a more flexible crosslinker yields higher detection efficiency. For the polymer composition studied, 2,5-diphenyloxazole (PPO) is the most adequate fluorescent solute and an increase in its concentration causes little change in the detection efficiency. The inclusion of a secondary fluorescent solute 1,4-bis-2-(5-phenyloxazolyl) benzene (POPOP) improves the C-PS radiometrical characteristics. For the final composition chosen, the synthesis of the C-PS exhibits good reproducibility with elevated yield. The obtained C-PS also displays high stability in different organic (toluene, hydrotreated vegetable oil (HVO) and methanol) and aggressive media (hydrochloric acid, nitric acid and hydrogen peroxide). Finally, the C-PS exhibits high detection efficiency both in water and in aggressive media and can also be applied in organic media showing similar or even higher detection efficiency values.
authors.affiliation: Departament de Química Analítica, Universitat de Barcelona, Diagonal 645, Barcelona E-08028, Spain. Electronic address: hector.bagan@ub.edu.
authors.forename: Héctor
authors.initials: H
authors.lastname: Bagán
authors.affiliation: Departament de Química Analítica, Universitat de Barcelona, Diagonal 645, Barcelona E-08028, Spain.
authors.forename: Alex
authors.initials: A
authors.lastname: Tarancón
authors.affiliation: Department of Pure and Applied Biochemistry, Lund University, POB 124, Lund SE-22100, Sweden.
authors.forename: Lei
authors.initials: L
authors.lastname: Ye
authors.affiliation: Departament de Química Analítica, Universitat de Barcelona, Diagonal 645, Barcelona E-08028, Spain.
authors.forename: José F
authors.initials: JF
authors.lastname: García
mesh_terms: D003432:Cross-Linking Reagents / Q000737:chemistry*; D004867:Equipment Design; D010080:Oxazoles / Q000737:chemistry*; D010969:Plastics / Q000737:chemistry*; D058105:Polymerization; D012588:Scintillation Counting / Q000295:instrumentation / Q000379:methods*
chemical_list: D003432:Cross-Linking Reagents; D010080:Oxazoles; D010969:Plastics; C009012:2,5-diphenyloxazole
keywords: Aggressive media; Biodiesels; Organic media; Plastic scintillation; Polymerisation