Until recently, the compilation of scintillator properties has largely proceeded as a side project to detector development efforts for fundamental physics and applications. The recently launched modernized version of the Berkeley Lab Scintillator Library is poised to change this landscape. 

This database provides measured properties of many scintillating materials along with citations to published papers in which the original measurements were reported. The recent expansion features an Organic Scintillator Library with a current focus on scintillator response to protons and heavy ions. These quenching data are required for modeling scintillator-based detector response to neutrons and charged particles [1] and are useful inputs for kinematic neutron image reconstruction algorithms [2]. The initial library release also includes tabulated data on recoil ion response for EJ-309, a widely-used liquid organic scintillator. The longer-term vision is to provide data on scintillation properties for an array of commercial and custom organic scintillators to facilitate comparison between measurements, provide a basis for theory development, and lay the foundation for future evaluation. 

This site is an extended version of a library focused on inorganic scintillators originally created by Stephen Derenzo, Martin Boswell, Marvin Weber, and Kathleen Brennan at Lawrence Berkeley National Laboratory (LBNL) with support from the Department of Homeland Security (DHS). The site is currently maintained by Bethany Goldblum and Thibault Laplace at LBNL and the University of California, Berkeley with support from the Nuclear Data Program within the Department of Energy, Office of Science, Nuclear Physics and the Department of Energy, National Nuclear Security Administration, Office of Defense Nuclear Nonproliferation Research & Development via the Nuclear Science and Security Consortium. 

In 2023, the site was visited by more than 1000 unique users from 47 countries around the globe. Figure 1 shows a world heat map illustrating country demographics of library visitors. 

For suggested additions to the library, contact Bethany Goldblum at bethany@lbl.gov. 

Figure 1: Heat map (using a sequential blue scale from the least to the most opaque shades representing low to high values) of visitors to the Scintillator Library by country since January 2023. 

References

[1] T.A. Laplace, B.L. Goldblum, J.A. Brown, G. LeBlanc, T. Li, J.J. Manfredi, and E. Brubaker, “Modeling ionization quenching in organic scintillators,” Materials Advances (2022). https://doi.org/10.1039/D2MA00388K 

[2] J.J. Manfredi, et al., “The Single-Volume Scatter Camera,” Proc. SPIE 11494, Hard X-Ray, Gamma-Ray, and Neutron Detector Physics XXII, 114940V (20 August 2020). https://doi.org/10.1117/12.2569995