Development of novel plastic scintillators based on polyvinyltoluene for the hybrid J-PET/MR tomograph

A novel plastic scintillator, referred to as J-PET scintillator, has been developed for the application in the digital positron emission tomography (PET). The novelty of the concept lies in application of the 2-(4-styrylphenyl)benzoxazole as a wavelength shifter. To date, the chemical compound has not been used as scintillator additive. A role of wavelength shifter is to shift the scintillation spectrum towards longer wavelengths making it more suitable for applications in scintillators of long strips geometry because of larger attenuation length, and light detection with digital silicon photomultipliers. In the thesis method of scintillators development and characterization of their properties are presented as well as synthesis method of the novel wavelength shifter. The optimal concentration of the novel wavelength shifter was established by maximizing the light output. Performance of scintillator, considering light emission spectrum, light emission efficiency, rising and decay times of the scintillation pulses were analyzed and compared to state of the art commercially available plastic scintillators. Structure of J-PET scintillators was studied and discussed.