The Multi-Blade is a Boron-10-based gaseous thermal neutron detector developed to face the challenge arising in neutron reflectometry at neutron sources. Neutron reflectometers are challenging instruments in terms of instantaneous counting rate and spatial resolution. This detector has been designed according to the requirements given by the reflectometers at the European Spallation Source (ESS) in Sweden. The Multi-Blade has been installed and tested on the CRISP reflectometer at the ISIS neutron and muon source in UK. The results on the detailed detector characterization are discussed in this manuscript.
In the last few years many detector technologies for thermal neutron detection have been developed in order to face the shortage of 3 He, which is now much less available and more expensive. Moreover the 3 He-based detectors can not fulfil the requirements in performance, e.g. the spatial resolution and the counting rate capability needed for the new instruments. The Boron-10-based gaseous detectors have been proposed as a suitable choice. This and other alternatives technologies are being developed at ESS. Higher intensities mean higher signals but higher background as well. The signal-to-background ratio is an important feature to study, in particular the γ-ray and the fast neutron contributions. This paper investigates, for the first time, the fast neutrons sensitivity of 10 B-based thermal neutron detector. It presents the study of the detector response as a function of energy threshold and the underlying physical mechanisms. The latter are explained with the help of theoretical considerations and simulations.
The Multi-Blade is a boron-10-based gaseous detector developed for neutron reflectometry instruments at the European Spallation Source in Sweden. The main challenges for neutron reflectometry detectors are the instantaneous counting rate and spatial resolution. The Multi-Blade has been tested on the CRISP reflectometer at the ISIS Neutron and Muon Source in the UK. A campaign of scientific measurements has been performed to study the Multi-Blade response in real instrumental conditions. The results of these tests are discussed in this paper.
The Multi-Blade is a Boron-10-based neutron detector designed for neutron reflectometers and developed for the two instruments (Estia and FREIA) planned for the European Spallation Source in Sweden. A reflectometry demonstrator has been installed at the AMOR reflectometer at the Paul Scherrer Institut (PSI -Switzerland). The setup exploits the Selene guide concept and it can be considered a scaled-down demonstrator of Estia. The results of these tests are discussed. It will be shown how the characteristics of the Multi-Blade detector are features that allow the focusing reflectometry operation mode. Additionally the performance of the Multi-Blade, in terms of rate capability, exceeds current state-of-the-art technology. The improvements with respect to the previous prototypes are also highlighted; from background considerations to the linear and angular uniformity response of the detector.
The 3 He-based neutron detectors are no longer the default solution for neutron scattering applications. Both the inability of fulfilling the requirements in performance, needed for the new instruments, and the shortage of 3 He, drove a series of research programs aiming to find new technologies for neutron detection. The characteristics of the new detector technologies have been extensively tested to prove their effectiveness with respect to the state-of-the-art technology.Among these, the background rejection capability is crucial to determine. The signal-to-background ratio is strongly related to the performance figure-of-merit for most instruments. These are designed to exploit the high flux expected from the new high intensity neutron sources. Therefore, an inadequate background rejection could significantly affect the measurements, leading to detector saturation and misleading events. This is of particular importance for the kind of techniques in which the signals are rather weak.For the first time, the sensitivity of 3 He detectors to fast neutrons, up to E n = 10 MeV, has been estimated. Two independent measurements are presented: a direct calculation based on a subtraction method used to disentangle the thermal and the fast neutron contribution, while a further evidence is calculated indirectly through a comparison with the recently published data from a 10 B-based detector. Both investigations give a characterization on the order of magnitude for the sensitivity. A set of simulations is presented as well in order to support and to validate the results of the measurements. A sensitivity of 4 · 10 −3 is observed from the data. This is two orders of magnitude higher than that previously observed in 10 B-based detectors.
The high neutron intensity, improvements in neutron delivery and increasingly more complex experiments at neutron scattering facilities, i.e. J-PARC, SNS, ISIS, CSNS and ESS, which is presently under construction, drive the development of neutron scattering instruments and their associated detectors. High position resolution is one of the most demanding detector requirements and is particularly relevant of neutron reflectometry applications. Scintillator detectors using ZnS:Ag/$$^6$$
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LiF coupled to wavelength shifting fibre (WLSF) are currently employed in several neutron scattering facilities, including J-PARC, SNS, ISIS and CSNS. For WLSF-based scintillation detectors, the position reconstruction is routinely achieved by determining the combination of fibres that absorb scintillation light. The use of position reconstruction algorithms, analysing light spread in the system, leads to an increase in the position resolution. The optimisation of a centre of gravity interpolation method for linear position-sensitive detectors has been developed, and a factor 2 improvement in position sensitivity has been achieved. The investigation of the light spread over the fibres and the detector performance in correlation with the reconstructed position resolution are discussed.
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