Speaker
Description
The widespread adoption of muography in civil engineering, volcanology and diverse multidisciplinary domains is currently hindered by the high production costs and complex assembly associated with traditional scintillator-strip detectors. To address this challenge, we present MuGrid-v2, a novel detector architecture that replaces discrete scintillator bars with a monolithic plastic scintillator coupled to a 3D-printed optical grid.
Compared to grooving or drilling on the scintillator, this design not only eliminates invasive machining processes but also leverages enhanced reflection to boost signal significance, enabling a more precise reconstruction of the hit position.
A prototype with three layers of $30 \times 30\ \text{cm}^2$ scintillators has been built for initial, achieving a spatial resolution of 4.6 mm. We then conducted field tests including a muographic imaging of a mountain, successfully revealed its three-dimensional structure, showing excellent agreement with topographic data.
We recently developed an upgraded $60 \times 60$ $\text{cm}^2$ detector module, optimizing the reflective grid material to significantly increase photon collection efficiency. The upscaled version also demonstrates a superior effective detection area ratio compared to smaller prototypes. We are currently optimizing the hardware and the algorithm, hoping to achieve a spatial resolution better than 3mm.
By balancing low-cost manufacturing with high-precision performance, MuGrid-v2 offers a scalable solution that we hope will promote the large-scale application of muography technology in various scenarios.