Advances in Additive Manufacturing of Plastic Scintillators for Low-Background Detectors

The LEGEND-1000 experiment represents the ton-scale phase of the LEGEND program’s search for neutrinoless double-beta decay of ⁷⁶Ge with a discovery sensitivity spanning the inverted-ordering neutrino mass scale. A possible improvement to the baseline design would be to encapsulate the germanium crystals used in the LEGEND-1000 experiment in scintillating plastic.This is done as both an effort to suppress background signals that would deposit energy in the region of interest as well as to increase the amount of active detector material used in the experiment. Advances in 3D printable scintillators open the door for more elaborate geometries not possible through traditional manufacturing techniques. More elaborate geometries could allow for equivalent veto efficiency for a smaller encapsulating mass compared to what is possible through traditional manufacturing techniques. This talk will focus on recent developments by Oak Ridge National Laboratory regarding plastic encapsulating materials for use in low background cryogenic environments such as the LEGEND-1000 cryostat.