A comparison of the neutron detection efficiency and response characteristics of two pixelated PSD-capable organic scintillator detectors with different photo-detection readout methods

TL;DR

This study compares two pixelated organic scintillator neutron detectors with different photo-detection readouts, demonstrating that the SiPM-based array has nearly double the neutron detection efficiency of the PMT-based array.

Contribution

It introduces and evaluates a SiPM-based pixelated neutron detector, showing improved uniformity and efficiency over traditional PMT-based systems.

Findings

SiPM-based detector has 30.2% neutron detection efficiency.

PMT-based detector has 16.9% neutron detection efficiency.

SiPM array shows improved uniformity and performance.

Abstract

We characterize the performance of two pixelated neutron detectors: a PMT-based array that utilizes Anger logic for pixel identification and a SiPM-based array that employs individual pixel readout. The SiPM-based array offers improved performance over the previously developed PMT-based detector both in terms of uniformity and neutron detection efficiency. Each detector array uses PSD-capable plastic scintillator as a detection medium. We describe the calibration and neutron efficiency measurement of both detectors using a $^{137}$Cs source for energy calibration and a $^{252}$Cf source for calibration of the neutron response. We find that the intrinsic neutron detection efficiency of the SiPM-based array is ($30.2 \ \pm \ 1.7$)\%, which is almost twice that of the PMT-based array, which we measure to be ($16.9 \pm 0.2$)\%.