Production and validation of scintillating structural components from low-background Poly(ethylene naphthalate)

Abstract

Poly Ethylene Naphthalate (PEN) is an industrial polymer plastic which is investigated as a low background, transparent, scintillating and wavelength shifting structural material. PEN scintillates in the blue region and has excellent mechanical properties both at room and cryogenic temperatures. Thus, it is an ideal candidate for active structural components in experiments for the search of rare events like neutrinoless double-beta decay or dark matter recoils. Such optically active structures improve the identification and rejection efficiency of background events, like this improving the sensitivity of experiments. This paper reports on the production of radiopure and transparent PEN plates These structures can be used to mount germanium detectors operating in cryogenic liquids (LAr, LN). Thus, as first application PEN holders will be used to mount the Ge detectors in the LEGEND-200 experiment. The whole process from cleaning the raw material to testing the PEN active components under final operational conditions is reported.

References in corpus (11)

• Final Results of GERDA on the Search for Neutrinoless Double-$\beta$ Decay
• The scintillation of liquid argon
• Upgrade for Phase II of the GERDA Experiment
• Development of an anti-Compton veto for HPGe detectors operated in liquid argon using Silicon Photo-Multipliers
• Polyethylene naphthalate film as a wavelength shifter in liquid argon detectors
• Use of polyethylene naphthalate as a self-vetoing structural material
• Ge Detectors and $0\nu \beta \beta$: The Search for Double Beta Decay with Germanium Detectors: Past, Present and Future
• Direct comparison of PEN and TPB wavelength shifters in a liquid argon detector
• Neutrinoless Double Beta Decay with Germanium Detectors: 10${}^{26}$ yr and Beyond
• Optical fiber read-out for liquid argon scintillation light
• Optical properties of low background PEN structural components for the LEGEND-200 experiment

Cited by in corpus (3)

• Optical properties of low background PEN structural components for the LEGEND-200 experiment
• Production and optical characterisation of blended Polyethylene Terephthalate (PET)/Polyethylene Naphthalate (PEN) scintillator samples
• Development of a method to measure trace level of uranium and thorium in scintillation films