A study of radiation tolerance in optical cements

We study the effect ionizing radiation has on light transmission in the wavelength range 190--1100~nm for a number of optically clear epoxies. We find that the transmittance of traditional, commercially available, optical epoxies show significant degradation for exposures of $1\times10^{12}$~MIPs/cm$^2$. Degradation of light transmission progresses from the shortest wavelengths at low doses to longer wavelengths as the dose increases. In epoxy joints that are 0.1~mm thick, we observe that more than 5\% of the light is lost for wavelengths less than 400~nm for traditional optical epoxies. Our studies have identified an optically clear epoxy that shows little degradation for radiation exposures up to $5.9\times 10^{14}$~MIPs/cm$^2$ ($\approx 220$~kGy).