Berkeley Lab

General Purpose Plastic Scintillator Quenching Data

Relative light yield in MeVee as a function of proton recoil energy from 0.047 to 30 MeV for organic plastic scintillators with a polyvinyltoluene (PVT) polymer base. Ionization quenching is a primary process occurring in the solvent/base of the material [Birks1964].1 As such, the relative proton light yield in PVT-based plastics is expected to be the same for the materials presented here and other PVT-based plastics with low concentration of dopants and fluors. Note that discrepancies in the relative proton light yield have been observed for PSD-capable plastics [Laplace2020JINST15] which are expected to contain a higher fluor concentration [Zaitseva2012NIMA668].

The discrepancy between the different reported proton light yield measurements can be explained in part by differences in the integration lengths used to measure the light output [Brown2018JourApplPhys124, Laplace2020NIMA959], bias associated with characterization of the Compton edge used for light output calibration [Dietze1982NIMA193], and bias associated with the edge characterization method used by some authors [Weldon2020NIMA953]. Most often ignored, non-proportionality of the electron light yield [Payne2011IEEE58Swiderski2012JINST7] may also introduce further biases in calibration/conversion to the MeVee light unit. In some cases, fit functions provided by the authors are shown in lieu of the original measurements due to challenges in extracting data points from the published graphs.

Additional quenching data are available at higher proton energies and for different recoil particles in the table below. Click the cells in the Reference column to view the paper from which the data is derived. The Data column will direct to a downloadable text file of the quenching data.

Reference Paper Scintillator Type MeasuredParticle Energy Range (MeV) Low Bin Energy Range (MeV) High Bin Data Text File
Laplace2020NIMA954NE-110
BC-400
EJ-208
Proton0.0712.5Click Here
Renner1978NIMA154NE-110
EJ-208
BC-412
Proton0.080.5Click Here
Dias1984NIMA224NE-110
EJ-208
BC-412
Proton0.5214Click Here
Dickens1989NIMA281NE-110
EJ-208
BC-412
Carbon10100Click Here
Langford2016JINST11Pilot F
EJ-200
BC-408
Proton0.22Click Here
Laplace2020NIMA954Pilot F
EJ-200
BC-408
Proton0.0643.86Click Here
Tran2018IEEETNS65Pilot F
EJ-200
BC-408
Electron 0.320.48Click Here
Nassalski2008IEEETNS55Pilot F
EJ-200
BC-408
Electron0.01664.196Click Here
Payne2011IEEETNS58Pilot F
EJ-200
BC-408
Electron 0.00850.482Click Here
Swiderski2012JINST7Pilot F
EJ-200
BC-408
Electron0.00974.1Click Here
Tkaczyk2018NIMA882Pilot F
EJ-200
BC-408
Proton and Electron1.319Click Here
Laplace2020NIMA954NE-104
EJ-204
BC-404
Proton0.0475.09Click Here
Laplace2021PRC104NE-104
EJ-204
BC-404
Proton0.20.55Click Here
Laplace2021PRC104NE-104
EJ-204
BC-404
Carbon14.3Click Here
Saraf1990NIMA288NE-104
EJ-204
BC-404
Ions313Click Here
Saraf1988NIMA268NE-104
EJ-204
BC-404
Protons & Deuterons111Click Here
Smith1968NIM64NE-102A
EJ-212
BC-400
Electrons0.160.99Click Here
Tran2018IEEETNS65NE-102A
EJ-212
BC-400
Electrons0.320.48Click Here
Smith1968NIM64NE-102A
EJ-212
BC-400
Protons0.2415Click Here
Gooding1960NIM7NE-102A
EJ-212
BC-400
Protons3160
Smith1968NIM64NE-102A
EJ-212
BC-400
Protons0.2415
Craun1970NIM80NE-102A
EJ-212
BC-400
Protons0.3515
Madey1978NIM151NE-102A
EJ-212
BC-400
Protons2.4319.55
Cecil1979NIM161NE-102A
EJ-212
BC-400
Protons0.122
Martin1981NIM185NE-102A
EJ-212
BC-400
Protons2.628
Naqvi1994NIMA345NE-102A
EJ-212
BC-400
Protons2.714.8Click Here
Czirr1994NIMA349NE-102A
EJ-212
BC-400
Protons0.251.4
Gooding1960NIM7NE-102A
EJ-212
BC-400
Deuterons3160
Gooding1960NIM7NE-102A
EJ-212
BC-400
Tritons3160
Gooding1960NIM7NE-102A
EJ-212
BC-400
Alphas3160
Cecil1979NIM161NE-102A
EJ-212
BC-400
Alphas0.122
Becchetti1976NIM138NE-102A
EJ-212
BC-400
Heavy Ions10.282.67
  1. J. Birks, The Theory and Practice of Scintillation Counting. New York, NY, USA: Pergamon, 1964, pp. 447–450. ↩︎