Multilayer phoswich scintillators for neutron / gamma discrimination

Romain Coulon (1) , Vladimir Kondrasovs (1) , Quentin Lecomte (1) , Jonathan Nicolas Dumazert (1)

1 LCAE (CEA, LIST) - Laboratoire Capteurs et Architectures Electroniques (CEA, LIST)

MultiLayer Phoswich (MLP) scintillators have been studied for fission neutron detection by Monte-Carlo simulations and experimental tests. n/γ discrimination behavior of these systems and their angular dependencies have been characterized. The possibility to carry on a neutron counting system based of such an approach has been proven, and according to the results, an optimal thickness of layers for fission neutron counting was found around [100–150] μm. But, contrary to current liquid or solid-state discrimination scintillators, it appears that MLP-based neutron counting systems cannot directly classify neutron and gamma-ray interaction events from pulse shape analysis. To operate properly, it is therefore required to implement a compensation algorithm in the system readout.

Mots clés: Neutrons; Scintillator; Phoswich; Multilayer; detector; Monte Carlo; neutron counting system; Gamma-rays; Discrimination; plastic scintillator; instrumentation; nuclear instrumentation; Neutron-gamma discrimination

Domaines: Instrumentations et Détecteurs [physics.ins-det]; Physique Nucléaire Expérimentale [nucl-ex]; Traitement du signal et de l'image [eess.SP]; Physique Numérique [physics.comp-ph]; Modélisation et simulation; Applications [stat.AP]

Romain Coulon, Vladimir Kondrasovs, Quentin Lecomte, Jonathan Nicolas Dumazert. Multilayer phoswich scintillators for neutron / gamma discrimination. Radiation Measurements, 2018, 117, pp.57 - 62. ⟨10.1016/j.radmeas.2018.07.011⟩. ⟨cea-01915979⟩