Weronkia Wolszczak, Exploring Scintillation Mechanisms - A Step towards Rational Design of New Scintillators, Hill Hall 202

Nuclear Science and Engineering Seminar
Wed. 3/18/26
4 pm Hill Hall 202

Dr. Weronkia Wolszczak
Lawrence Berkeley National Lab

Exploring Scintillation Mechanisms using Ultrafast Laser Spectroscopy - A Step towards Rational Design of New Scintillators

Rational design of next-generation radiation detection materials requires a mechanistic understanding of how deposited energy is converted into a measurable scintillation signal. We will outline a long-term vision for moving scintillator development beyond trial-and-error discovery by combining ultrafast/fast optical spectroscopy with functional characterization to directly connect underlying photophysics to detector-relevant response. As an initial step, a suite of steady-state and pulsed photoluminescence measurements dissected the energy-transfer processes in polystyrene-based scintillators. Using a controlled set of formulations and comparative samples, we identify optically detectable trace styrene residue remaining after polymerization, and show that this impurity can participate in the energy-transfer pathway. By selectively probing individual components and the full energy-transfer chain, we quantify transfer behavior and derive preliminary design rules that link composition and energy-transfer structure to the observed optical response. These results demonstrate how spectroscopy can expose hidden pathways and bottlenecks, providing guidance for future scintillator optimization and deliberate design.