I was going through some boxes the other day and I found a bottle of sodium fluorescein which I had originally planned to make a dye laser with ages ago. This is a red powder which gives the bright green colour to detergents and dishwashing liquids. It's a commonly available dye which I bought from a local chemical shop quite cheaply at the time.
Looking at the stuff I began to wonder if it could be pressed into service as a liquid scintillator phosphor, but I don't know how the proton recoil mechanism works exactly or specifically, whether it would excite this particular dye. If a liquid with a high hydrogen content and suitable transparency could be found, like a clear mineral oil and assuming the dye will light up with a proton recoil at all there remains all kinds of questions to be resolved before it's a useful method, such as: response time, light output, shelf life, aging etc. The advantages would be the cheapness and the possible size of the active area. Another possibility I note is a natural boron loaded scintillator (BC-523) which can produce a capture pulse in addition to the proton recoil to discriminate neutrons from gamma rays.
If anyone has some input or ideas I can try please let me know.
regards Mark H
Created on Friday, May 18, 2001 7:32 AM EDT by Mark G Harriss