Improved 3D Printing Plastic Scintillator Fabrication

3D printing techniques can be widely used for various applications owing to their fast speed, convenience, and customized shape output. The 3D printing technique is applicable to plastic scintillator fabrication which typically uses polymerization. Currently, research on application of the 3D printing technique based on photopolymerization to plastic scintillator fabrication is being pursued. However, performance of the photopolymerized scintillators reported till now is lower than that of commercial plastic scintillators (~ 30%). We have carried out research on performance improvement of the scintillator fabricated by the photopolymerization, for radiation dose measurement. Photopolymer resin with novel recipe based on acrylic monomer and naphthalene was used to fabricate the scintillator instead of the photopolymer resin based on styrene, which is typically used as the monomer for commercial scintillator. 3D printer with digital light processing was used for the photopolymerization of the photopolymer resin. As a result, light output performance of the fabricated plastic scintillator was about 67% compared with that of the commercial plastic scintillator, BC-408. The performance of the scintillator fabricated by the photopolymerization was thus improved to more than two times that obtained by previous researchers. This is sufficient to be applied to the radiation dose measurement with high dose rates such as radiation therapy. It also demonstrated the applicability of the 3D printing technique in scintillator fabrication.