Radiation damages in chemical components of organic scintillator detectors

Samples containing PPO (1%, g/ml), diluted in toluene, they were irradiated in a 60Co irradiator (6.46 kGy/h) at different doses. The PPO concentration decay bi-exponentially with the dose, generating the degradation products: benzoic acid, benzamide and benzilic alcohol. The liquid scintillator system was not sensitive to the radiation damage until 20 kGy. Otherwise, the pulse height analysis showed that dose among 30 to 40 kGy generate significant loss of quality of the sensor (liquid scintillating) and the light yield was reduced in half with the dose of (34.04 ± 0.80) kGy. This value practically was confirmed by the photo peak position analysis that resulted D1/2 = (31.7 ± 1,4) kGy, The transmittance, at 360 nm, of the irradiated solution decreased exponentially. The compartmental model using five compartments (fast decay PPO, slow decay PPO, benzamide, benzoic acid and benzilic alcohol) it was satisfactory to explain the decay of the PPO in its degradation products in function of the dose. The explanation coefficient r2 = 0.985636 assures that the model was capable to explain 98.6% of the experimental variations. The Target Theory together with the Compartmental Analysis showed that PPO irradiated in toluene solution presents two sensitive molecular diameters both of them larger than the true PPO diameter. >From this analysis it showed that the radiolytic are generated, comparatively, at four toluene molecules diameter far from PPO molecules. For each one PPO-target it was calculated the G parameter (damage/100 eV). For the target expressed by the fast decay the G value was (418.4 ± 54.1) damages/100 eV, and for the slow decay target the G value was (54.5 ± 8.9) damages/100 eV. The energies involved in the chemical reactions were w (0.239 ± 0.031) eV/damage (fast decay) and w = (1 834 ± 0.301) eV/damage (slow decay). (author)