Temperature-Dependent Properties of BC-412 Polyvinyl Toluene Scintillator

Polyvinyl toluene (PVT), with additives, is a widely used organic plastic scintillator that is robust and inexpensive for large-volume gamma-ray detectors. Even though PVT-based scintillators have been used for decades in many applications, some of their basic optical properties have not been fully explored. Measurements of the attenuation length, index of refraction, and scintillation light output of a specific commercial PVT-based scintillator (Saint-Gobain BC-412) as a function of temperature are presented. These properties are important to the performance of systems using PVT-based scintillators in environments subject to wide temperature variations and are being used to better model the performance of such applications.