On the Use of Pixelated Plastic Scintillator and Silicon Photomultipliers Array for Coded Aperture Gamma-Neutron Imaging

Abstract

We report the investigations made on the use of pixelated plastic scintillator (PS) and silicon photomultipliers (SiPMs) array applied to coded aperture gamma-neutron imaging. Specifically, verification of the ability of a multiplexing readout to discriminate and localize neutron interactions was studied. In its intended configuration, the gamma-neutron imager design consists of a coded aperture aligned with a matrix of <inline-formula> <tex-math notation="LaTeX">$12\times12$ </tex-math></inline-formula> PS each coupled to a SiPM. The coded aperture is a rank 7 modified uniformly redundant array (MURA), composed of 1.2 cm of tungsten, with a surface area of 100.4 mm <inline-formula> <tex-math notation="LaTeX">$\times100.4$ </tex-math></inline-formula> mm and placed at 5 cm from the detector. The pixelated PS is composed of polystyrene and standard fluorophores (20 wt&#x0025; PPO, 0.03 wt&#x0025; POPOP) loaded with a lithium carboxylate (Li <inline-formula> <tex-math notation="LaTeX">$\alpha $ </tex-math></inline-formula>-valerate), which allows the triple discrimination between thermal neutrons, fast neutrons, and photons. Each pixel of PS has a dimension of 3.6 mm <inline-formula> <tex-math notation="LaTeX">$\times3.6$ </tex-math></inline-formula> mm <inline-formula> <tex-math notation="LaTeX">$\times3.6$ </tex-math></inline-formula> mm and they are separated from each other by 0.6 mm of polytetrafluoroethylene (PTFE). The photonic and electronic readout consists of the ArrayC-30035-144P SiPM from SensL, Cork, Ireland, connected to the diode coupled charge division readout from AiT. First, this neutron imager design was modeled and simulated using the MCNP6 Monte Carlo code. The encoding capability, field of view, and spatial resolution of the neutron imager were therefore evaluated by simulation. Then, we detailed the experimental setups implemented to demonstrate the feasibility of coupling pixelated PS to SiPM to localize radioactive sources and showed the results obtained. Finally, based on this position-sensitive gamma-neutron detector, a gamma-neutron imager was prototyped and tested.