Boron-loaded organic glass scintillators

Herein we report the progress towards an organic glass scintillator with fast and thermal neutron sensitivity providing “triple” pulse shape discrimination (PSD) through the inclusion of a boron-incorporated aromatic molecule. The commercially available molecule 2-(p-tolyl)-1,3,2-dioxaborinane (TDB) can be readily synthesized in one step using inexpensive materials and incorporated into the organic glass scintillator at 20% by weight or 0.25% 10B by mass. In addition, we demonstrate that TDB can be easily scaled up and formulated into organic glass scintillator samples to produce a thermal neutron capture signal with a light yield equivalent to 120.4 ± 3.7 keVee, which is the highest value reported in the literature to date.