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Characterization of boron-coated silicon sensors for thermal neutron detection

Abstract

Silicon neutron detectors can operate at low voltage and come with ease of fabrication and the possibility of integration of readout electronics and thus are attractive from an application point of view. In this paper, we have studied thermal neutron capture by silicon diodes coated with boron carbide (B4C). One of the surfaces of the diodes was covered with either natural B4C (B4C) or with enriched B4C (B4C). We have investigated: (a) the effect of increase in the sensitive area of the surface of the diode covered with B4C on the neutron detection efficiency and (b) the effect of enrichment of 10B in B4C. The difference in 10B in B4C (16 at. in the deposited film) and B4C ( 79 at. in the deposited film) leads to about three times increase in detection efficiency of the same detector. For the given experimental conditions, we do not observe a direct relationship between increase in the surface area and the detection efficiency. Energy spectra obtained by Geant4 simulations support the experimental observation of finding no direct relation between increase in the surface area and the detection efficiency.
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Category

Academic article

Language

English

Author(s)

  • Shruti Vineet Mehendale
  • Kalliopi Kanaki
  • Marco Povoli
  • Andreas Tefre Samnøy
  • Ganesh Jagannath Tambave
  • Angela Kok
  • Carina Höglund
  • Susann Schmidt
  • Saima Sultana Kazi
  • Isabel Llamas-Jansa
  • Thomas Kittelmann
  • Chung-Chuan Lai
  • Thor-Erik Hansen
  • S. Pospisil
  • Tomáš Slavíček
  • Dieter Røhrich
  • Richard Hall-Wilton

Affiliation

  • SINTEF Digital / Smart Sensors and Microsystems
  • Sweden
  • University of Milan-Bicocca
  • Switzerland
  • Czech Technical University in Prague
  • University of Bergen
  • Institute for Energy Technology

Year

2020

Published in

Nuclear Instruments and Methods in Physics Research Section A : Accelerators, Spectrometers, Detectors and Associated Equipment

ISSN

0168-9002

Volume

972

View this publication at Norwegian Research Information Repository