Characterization of the silicon+6LiF thermal neutron detection technique

TL;DR

This paper evaluates silicon+6LiF neutron detectors as a viable alternative to 3He tubes, analyzing their efficiency, spectrum, and gamma/neutron discrimination capabilities through characterization of different converter thicknesses.

Contribution

It provides a detailed characterization of silicon+6LiF neutron detectors, demonstrating their potential for high efficiency and effective gamma/neutron discrimination.

Findings

Detection efficiency can be reasonably high.

Gamma/neutron discrimination is comparable to 3He tubes.

Spectrum shape contributions are disentangled and understood.

Abstract

The worldwide need to replace 3He for the neutron detection has triggered R&D on new technologies and methods. A promising one is based on commercial solid state silicon detectors coupled with thin neutron converter layers containing 6Li. After proving the feasibility of this technique, we characterized the behavior of such a detector with different converter layer thicknesses. In this paper we also disentangle other contributions to the overall spectrum shape observed with this kind of detector, proving that its detection efficiency can be made reasonably high and that the gamma/neutron discrimination capability is comparable to the one of 3He tubes.