Development of Plastic Scintillator Loaded with CdTe QDs for Detection of Muons

This project presents the design and development of a polystyrenebased plastic scintillator doped with cadmium telluride (CdTe)quantum dots (QDs), optimized for the detection of minimum ionizingparticles such as muons. The scintillator matrix incorporates PPO (0.3wt%) as the primary fluor and POPOP (0.04 wt%) as the secondaryfluor to shift the emission from ultraviolet to blue wavelengths (~420nm). CdTe QDs are added at 0.1 wt% to further shift the emissionspectrum to ~494 nm and enhance total light yield via quantumconfinement effects. The synthesized CdTe nanoplatelets exhibitsharp absorption at 2.51 eV and fast photoluminescence decay,significantly improving optical coupling with photomultiplier tubes(PMTs).The scintillator dimensions are 200×30 mm, chosen for anoptimal balance between interaction volume and timingperformance. To reduce corner light loss and improve internalreflectivity, the geometry is wrapped with Teflon and ESR film. Theexpected light output is approximately 8000–10000 photons/MeV,with sub-nanosecond timing resolution (