Tuning the decay time of liquid scintillators

Abstract The choice of an appropriate viscosity of a liquid scintillator solvent can lead to the fine tuning of its decay time. We present herein the photophysical and scintillation properties of liquid scintillators containing pyrene and 9,10-diphenylanthracene as the primary and secondary fluorophores, respectively, being dissolved either in toluene, diisopropylnaphthalene or mixtures of these two solvents. By modifying the dynamic viscosity, the photoluminescence decay time can be easily chosen in the range 40 – 120 ns. For all liquid scintillators the light yields were satisfying, and the scintillation decays were slightly different, ranging from 36 up to 125 ns.