Abstract
A new position-sensitive thermal neutron detector based on boron-coated converters has been developed as an alternative to today’s standard ^3mathrm{He}-based technology for application to thermal neutron scattering. The key elements of the development are the boron-coated GEM foils (Sauli in Nucl Instrum Methods Phys Res Sect A Accel Spectrom Detect Assoc Equip 386:531, 1997) that are used as a multi-layer neutron converter via the ^{10}mathrm{B}(n,alpha )^7mathrm{Li} reaction together with an efficient collection of the produced secondary electrons. This paper reports the test performed on a 3 layers converter prototype coupled to a GEMPix detector (Murtas in Radiat Meas 138:106421, 2020), carried out in order to study the possibility to produce a large-scale multi-layer neutron detector capable to reach high detection efficiency with high spatial resolution and able to sustain the high neutron flux expected in the new neutron spallation source under development like the ESS.
Highlights
Neutral particles detection with gas electron multiplier (GEM) is typically performed by adopting a customized cathode configuration, where primary electrons are liberated in the detector gas due to neutrals interactions, followed by an amplification stage
This paper describes the development, the construction and the characterization of a new GEM-based thermal neutron detector called MBGEM, equipped with a converter cathode made of a series of GEM foils coated on both sides with a layer (1 μm thick) of 10B4C
The relative detection efficiency is calculated as the ratio between the counting rate recorded with all the BGEM set to 0 V
Summary
Plus (2021) 136:742 neutron sources like ESS These two reasons led to the development of new position-sensitive neutron detectors capable of detection efficiencies comparable with 3He tubes, but being able to sustain much higher counting rates than the 30–50 kHz typical for single 3He tubes [4]. GEM detectors are typically used for tracking and triggering application in high energy physics [5], but they can be used for neutral particles detection like fast [6,7,8,9] and thermal [10,11,12,13,14] neutrons or photon [15,16]. The paper is addressed to study the response of the new converter configuration in view of the production of a large area, high efficiency thermal neutron detector
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