Scintillating discovery at Sandia Labs

For these reasons, Sandia Labs’ team began experimenting with organic glasses, which are able to discriminate between types of radiation. In fact, Feng’s team found the glass scintillators surpass even the trans-stilbene in radiation detection tests  — they are brighter and better at discriminating between types of radiation.

Another challenge: The initial glass compounds the team made weren’t stable. If the glasses got too hot for too long, they would crystallize, which affected their performance. Feng’s team found that blending compounds containing fluorene to the organic glass molecules made them indefinitely stable. The stable glasses could then also be melted and cast into large blocks, which is an easier and less expensive process than making plastics or trans-stilbene.

From the lab to the ports
The work thus far shows indefinite stability in a laboratory, meaning the material does not degrade over time. Now, the next step toward commercialization is casting a very large prototype organic glass scintillator for field testing. Feng and his team want to show that organic glass scintillators can withstand the humidity and other environmental conditions found at ports.

Sandia notes that the National Nuclear Security Administration has funded the project for an additional two years. This gives the team time to see if they can use organic glass scintillators to meet additional national security needs.

Going forward, Feng and his team also plan to experiment with the organic glass until it can distinguish between sources of gamma rays that are non-threatening and those that can be used to make dirty bombs.