Performance and pulse shape discrimination of glass scintillator SG101 for neutron detection

TL;DR

This paper evaluates the performance of the glass scintillator SG101 for thermal neutron detection, demonstrating its high efficiency and excellent pulse shape discrimination capabilities when coupled with organic scintillators.

Contribution

The study provides a comprehensive characterization of SG101's detection efficiency, energy resolution, and PSD performance, establishing it as a promising neutron detection material.

Findings

SG101 achieves a FOM of 3.81 for neutron/gamma separation with EJ200.

SG101 with EJ276 resolves gamma rays, fast neutrons, and thermal neutrons distinctly.

Correlation analysis confirms significant physical event correlations beyond accidental background.

Abstract

We present a detailed characterization of the thermal neutron sensitive transparent glass scintillator SG101, benchmarked against the conventional LiF ZnS(Ag)based scintillator EJ426. The detection efficiency, energy resolution, and pulse shape discrimination (PSD) performance ofSG101 were evaluated under AmBe neutron irradiation. When coupled with organic scintillators(EJ200 or EJ276),the SG101 EJ200 system achieves a figure of merit (FOM) of 3.81 for thermal neutron/gamma separation, while the SG101 EJ276 configuration resolves three distinct particle populations gamma rays, fast neutrons, and thermal neutrons with FOM values of 3.46 and2.21, respectively. Correlation analysis reveals that the number of fast thermal neutron coincidence events significantly exceeds the accidental background, and the count of gamma fast thermal neutron triple-coincidence events is also far higher than the expected accidental rate, confirming significant physical correlations for both event types within a 100 us time window. These results demonstrate that SG101 is a promising candidate for applications requiring high-efficiency thermal neutron detection and precise event tagging coupling with a scintillator with PSD approach