Used Photomultipliers - Where are they?

analyze who uses them now and go to the places that service them.

PM tubes lose their efficiency over time and get replaced. They my still be useable to you.

scintillators are made from crystals, grow them, it is doable, but needs some control.

google it up

Photomultipliers get damaged only if they are exosed to too much light or develop vacuum leak else they continue to be useful with some reduced efficiency and increased dark current for few decades. Some people must be keeping them in junk store for nothing and I want to pull them out to put them to some good use. Some time ago there were many in the surplus market. Original are too costly. I want at about US$40-50 range for used one.

if they are used for decades they get scrapped with the instrument they were built into and newer better instruments take their place.

With a life measured in decades they would not be a socketed part, they would be hard wired into the system.

Possibly some research places into the neutrino have old ones cheap.

follow some of these links.

http://www.sno.phy.queensu.ca/

Thanks for information. I will try to look for nuclear electronics scrap where they may still in working condition and useful to my job.

Photomultipliers also degrade with time and useage to the point where they are no longer efficient enough to be worth using. They might also have fallen foul of the new 'green' regulations, in the UK, if you were scrapping a photomultiplier it would have to be broken up to dispose of the more dangerous elements separately.

Green regulation may make the PM Tubes produced few years ago absolate. I can use them. Green regulation is very stupid type and it permits 100kg lead in lead acid baattery but not 1g on PCB. Your car has lots of Chromium but not your PCB used in the instruments inside the same car. You can get rid of these metals so easily and even if you do as we did with plastics only to find them toxic. PM Tubes have vacuum to the level of 10E-11 level and if they are banned for Green must be sure a big joke.