Organic Glass Scintillators

Organic Glass Scintillators (OGSs) have recently been reported as an exciting class of materials that exhibit noteworthy physical and scintillation characteristics. OGSs are based on a stable, amorphous, small-molecule host matrix that contains performance-enhancing additives such as wavelength shifters. This configuration provides a unique set of properties that combines attributes of single crystals, plastic scintillators, and liquid scintillators, respectively. Noteworthy OGS properties include scalable production via melt-casting, scintillation light yields and pulse-shape discrimination properties that are comparable to crystalline trans-stilbene, and isotropic optical and mechanical properties that are reminiscent of plastic scintillators. This chapter will describe OGS as a new class of organic scintillators and will review the molecular design considerations that can be utilized to meet the needs of existing and future radiation detection applications. These topics will be presented in the context of the energy transfer pathways and structure-property relationships discussed in detail in the preceding chapter (Chap. 7).