A new concept of thermal neutron counting with sub-microsecond timing resolution

作者：Tremsin Anton S^*; Feller W Bruce; Siegmund Oswald H W

来源：IEEE Transactions on Nuclear Science, 2008, 55(3): 1664-1669.

DOI：10.1109/TNS.2008.924071

• event counting
• high resolution timing
• neutron imaging

A conceptual design of a novel type of thermal and cold neutron counting detector with one-dimensional spatial resolution of < 30 mu m, and timing resolution as low as < 50 nanoseconds, is proposed. The detector uses microchannel plates (MCPs) doped with neutron absorbing B-10 atoms. MCP-based detectors allow two-dimensional position localization of neutron events with resolution better than 30 mu m and similar to 1 mu s timing accuracy. The intrinsic temporal resolution of MCP detectors is in the subnanosecond range. In this paper we show how this combination of high 2-D spatial (< 30 mu m) and temporal (similar to 1 mu s) resolution can be converted into 1-D spatial (< 30 mu m) and similar to 50 ns timing resolution for each detected neutron.
Another unique characteristic of the proposed neutron detector is its rather high neutron detection efficiency, exceeding 50%, as predicted by our extensive analytical modeling, accuracy of which was confirmed by the first experimental measurements. The active area of these detectors can be as large as similar to 10 x 10 cm(2) in the 2-D configuration and similar to 100 x 1 mm(2) in the 1-D case. One-dimensional detectors can be staggered to perform imaging in two dimensions with high timing resolution.

• 出版日期2008-6