Highly Lead-Loaded Red Plastic Scintillators as an X-Ray Imaging System for the Laser Méga Joule

The scope of this project intends to record spatially resolved images of core shape and size of a deuterium-tritium microballoon during inertial confinement fusion (ICF) experiments at Laser Méga Joule facility (LMJ). We need to develop an x-ray imaging system which can operate in the hard radiative background generated by an ignition shot of ICF. The scintillator is a part of the imaging system and has to gather a compromise of scintillating properties (scintillating efficiency, decay time, emission wavelength) so as to both operate in the hard radiative environment and to allow the acquisition of spatially resolved images. Inorganic scintillators cannot be used because no compromise can be found regarding the expected scintillating properties. Most of them are not fast enough and emit blue light. Organic scintillators are generally fast, but present low x-ray photoelectric absorption in the 10 to 40 keV range. This does not enable the acquisition of spatially resolved images.