High Spatial Resolution Structured Plastic Scintillator

描述（由申请人提供）：中子技术补充了x射线衍射技术在各种材料中精确定位氢原子和原子的能力。这些信息对于确定蛋白质的结构和功能以及发现发生在亚分子水平上的生物过程至关重要，这些知识在酶学，功能基因组学，生物能量学和结构生物学领域是必要的。高通量脉冲中子源和便携式实验室源的出现将使研究人员能够使用这种独特的探针对生物物质进行详细的功能研究。然而，不幸的是，目前最先进的区域检测器技术在灵敏度、位置分辨率和计数率能力、逻辑复杂性或非实时输出方面存在显著的性能限制。相对较新的数字读出技术有潜力克服许多这些限制，但不幸的是，它们受到当前中子敏感闪烁体技术的限制。当前闪烁体与检测效率和空间分辨率之间的权衡有关；对中子和3射线事件的区分度低，反应慢。新的闪烁体的发展克服了这些困难，并提供了更高的信噪比，将导致改进的探测器，这将在有效利用中子源以促进重要发现方面发挥至关重要的作用。为了解决当前中子闪烁体技术的局限性，我们建议开发一种大面积、低成本、结构化的闪烁体，同时提供非常高的空间分辨率、高探测效率、对伽马辐射的低灵敏度和快速的时间响应。此外，所提出的闪烁体的结构性质将最小化闪烁光的横向扩散，从而提供具有优越对比度的图像。这样开发的新型闪烁体将集成到当前的数字读数中，以演示探测器的制造，通过在ORNL和NIST等国家实验室进行测试，将满足全球各机构当前和计划中的实验的苛刻需求。商业化工作将与一个在全球拥有良好生产能力和销售团体的工业伙伴合作进行。

DESCRIPTION (provided by applicant): Neutron techniques complement X-ray diffraction techniques in their ability to precisely locate hydrogen and light atoms in various materials. This information is critical for determining the structure and function of proteins and for the discovery of biological processes taking place on a sub-molecular level, the knowledge of which is necessary in the fields of enzymology, functional genomics, bioenergetics, and structural biology. The advent of high flux pulsed neutron sources and portable laboratory sources will allow researchers to use this unique probe for detailed functional studies of biological matter. Unfortunately, however, the current state of the art area detector technology has significant performance limitations in terms of sensitivity, position resolution, and count rate capability, logistic complications, or non-real-time output. Relatively new digital readout technologies have potential to overcome many of these limitations, but unfortunately they are limited by the current neutron-sensitive scintillator technology. Current scintillators are associated with a tradeoff between detection efficiency and spatial resolution; have low discrimination between neutron and 3-ray events, and are slow in response. The development of new scintillators that overcome these difficulties and provide enhanced signal-to-noise ratios will result in improved detectors that will play a vital role in the effective utilization of neutron sources to facilitate important discoveries. We propose to address limitations of the current neutron scintillator technology by developing a large area, low cost, structured scintillator that can simultaneously provide very high spatial resolution, high detection efficiency, low sensitivity to gamma radiation, and fast temporal response. Furthermore, structured nature of the proposed scintillator will minimize lateral spread of scintillation light, thereby providing images with superior contrast. The novel scintillator thus developed will be integrated into the current digital readouts to demonstrate fabrication of detectors that will fulfill the demanding needs of the current and planned experiments at various institutions around the globe by conducting tests at such national laboratories as ORNL and NIST. The commercialization efforts will be undertaken in collaboration with an industrial partner who has well established production capabilities and marketing groups around the globe.