Experimental determination of gamma-ray discrimination in pillar-structured thermal neutron detectors under high gamma-ray flux

Abstract

a b s t r a c tIn this paper, we demonstrate a detector that has a high neutron-to-gamma discrimination of 8.5 Â 10 5 with a high thermal neutron detection efficiency of 39% when exposed to a high gamma-ray field of 10 9 photons/cm 2 s. The detector is based on a silicon pillar structure filled with a neutron converter material ( 10 B) designed to have high thermal neutron detection efficiency. The pillar dimensions are 50 mm pillar height, 2 mm pillar diameter and 2 mm spacing between adjacent pillars.