PEN is an industrial polyester plastic which has become interesting for the physics community as a new type of plastic scintillator. PEN scintillates in the blue regime, which is ideal for most photosensor devices. In addition, PEN has excellent mechanical properties and very good radiopurity has been achieved. Thus, it is an ideal candidate for active structural components in low-background experiments. One possible application are holders for germanium detectors operating in cryogenic liquids (LAr, LN2). Such structures can help to reject surface and external backgrounds, boosting the sensitivity of experiments. In this contribution, the R\&D on PEN is outlined and an evaluation of the first production of PEN structures for the LEGEND-200 experiment is reported.
Cite
@article{arxiv.2011.08983,
title = {Usage of PEN as self-vetoing structural material in low background experiments},
author = {I. Abt and Y. Efremenko and M. Febbraro and F. Fischer and M. Guitart and K. Gusev and B. Hackett and C. Hayward and R. Hodak and P. Krause and B. Majorovits and L. Manzanillas and D. Muenstermann and R. Pjatkan and M. Pohl and R. Rouhana and D. Radford and E. Rukhadze and N. Rumyantseva and I. Schilling and S. Schoenert and O. Schulz and M. Schwarz and M. Stommel and J. Weingarten},
journal= {arXiv preprint arXiv:2011.08983},
year = {2020}
}