Under certain environmental conditions, polyvinyl toluene (PVT) plastic scintillator has been observed to undergo internal fogging. Nuclear magnetic resonance spectroscopy has been used to elucidate the state of water inside the PVT.
The deuterium NMR results show that water absorbed by PVT under warm, humid conditions enters several distinct environments, and when the PVT is transferred from incubation to ambient temperature and humidity the water is lost on a time scale of a few hours from these samples. Most of the deuterium NMR peaks can be assigned to bulk liquid water, but almost 35% of the detected signal intensity is contained in a resonance that resembles spectra of water contained in nanometer-scale pores in mesoporous carbon.
Revised: November 17, 2017 |
Published: June 6, 2017