From October 28 to 29, 2025, the Scintillator Enhancement Workshop 2025 was held at the Ginga Hall, Faculty of Science and Engineering, Iwate University. The workshop is part of Platform A, a KEK detector development project focused on improving scintillators — the light-emitting materials used to detect cosmic rays and other radiation. As part of the workshop, Seiki Tanida, a graduate student at Kyushu University, gave a talk titled “Development of 3D-printed scintillators for compact cosmic-ray detectors.”
Compact cosmic-ray detectors like OSECHI need to be low-cost, compact, and easy to build. Since 2023, the team has been 3D-printing their own scintillators.
Tanida reported that the team tuned the printing process (such as how long to expose the resin to UV light) on flat test pieces until they could reliably print shapes matching the design. They also confirmed that their 3D-printed scintillator produces about 60% of the light output of a commercial one — consistent with results from a parallel investigation at Osaka University.
Tanida also identified two remaining challenges: finding ways to further increase the light output, and figuring out why printing failed when the team tried using the same resin again two months later.
On the second day, a bear was spotted on the Iwate University campus, and some participants ended up switching to online attendance as a result.
Talk Details #
- Title: Development of 3D-printed scintillators for compact cosmic-ray detectors
- Speaker: Seiki Tanida (Kyushu University)
- Co-authors: Ren Matsukuma, Keiko Moriyama, Mizuki Yoshioka (Kyushu University), Shota Takami, Kazuki Ueno (Osaka University)
- Workshop: Scintillator Enhancement Workshop 2025 (Platform A), October 28-29, 2025, Ginga Hall, Faculty of Science and Engineering, Iwate University
- Link: https://kds.kek.jp/event/56769/
- Slides: https://kds.kek.jp/event/56769/contributions/302491/