Highly Soluble p-Terphenyl and Fluorene Derivatives as Efficient Dopants in Plastic Scintillators for Sensitive Nuclear Material Detection.

Plastic scintillators are commonly used as first-line detectors for special nuclear materials. Current state-of-the-art plastic scintillators based on poly(vinyltoluene) (PVT) matrices containing high loadings (>15.0 wt %) of 2,5-diphenyloxazole (PPO) offer neutron signal discrimination in gamma radiation background (termed pulse shape discrimination, PSD), however, they suffer from poor mechanical properties.

Boron-rich benzene and pyrene derivatives for the detection of thermal neutrons.

A synthetic methodology is developed to generate boron rich aromatic small molecules based on benzene and pyrene moieties for the detection of thermal neutrons. The prepared aromatic compounds have a relatively high boron content up to 7.4 wt%, which is important for application in neutron detection as (10)B (20% of natural abundance boron) has a large neutron induced reaction cross-section.