Development of a low-cost extruded scintillator with co-extruded reflector for the MINOS experiment

The MINOS experiment is a long-baseline, neutrino-oscillation experiment. In total, 28000 m/sup 2/ of scintillator is needed for the experiment. This is almost 300 tons of finished scintillator. The solution has been the development of an extruded scintillator with a 2 mm deep grove in the upper surface for a wavelength-shifting fiber and a co-extruded TiO/sub 2/ coating as a reflector. The TiO/sub 2/ coating also allows the scintillator to be directly epoxied into panels. Production and quality control techniques are presented.