Development of a simulation framework and experimental methods for understanding light collection in nanocomposite scintillators

The European Pathfinder project Unicorn aims to develop advanced nanoparticle-based scintillating materials for high-resolution and rapid-response radiation detection. This work explores the scintillation properties of nanocrystals in polymer matrices, aiming at applications in gamma and beta decay detection. The production of such scintillating composite requires to estimate the effect of absorption and scattering processes in the light transport on the performance of the final detector system. This contribution explores a novel experimental method using a spectrophotometer with a plug-in integrating sphere to obtain these parameters and investigates their influence on the light collection via Monte Carlo simulations in Geant4.