A class of boron-rich solid-state neutron detectors

Robertson, B. W.; Adenwalla, Shireen; Harken, Andrew; Welsch, P.; Brand, Jennifer; Dowben, Peter A.; Claassen, J. P.

doi:10.1063/1.1477942

Cited by 126 publications

(100 citation statements)

References 20 publications

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“…Recently, Robertson et al [16], have reported the fabrication of a diode from 270 nm boron carbide layer deposited on n-type Si. They exposed the device to a nuclear reactor, acquired pulse-height spectra, and ascribed features in the spectra to the reaction products of the 10 B(n, α) 7 Li reaction.…”

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Neutron detection with cryogenics and semiconductors

Bell

Carpenter

Cristy

et al. 2005

phys. stat. sol. (c)

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PACS 29.30.Hs, 29.40.Vj, 29.40.Wk The common methods of neutron detection are reviewed with special attention paid to the application of cryogenics and semiconductors to the problem. The authors' work with LiF-and boron-based cryogenic instruments is described as well as the use of CdTe and HgI 2 for direct detection of neutrons. 1 Introduction Advances in materials and methods have enabled the detection of radiation by means today that would have seemed, to pioneers in the field a century ago, like science fiction. Improvements in technology have resulted, for gamma ray detection, in high-purity germanium operating at 77 K and providing 0.1% energy resolution above 1 MeV, more than an order of magnitude improvement over what was (and still is) achievable by scintillators. However, operating below 1 K, cryogenic calorimeters have been used in X-ray astronomy, in the search for dark matter, and more recently in gamma ray spectroscopy, and have achieved better than 70 eV resolution at 60 keV [1], a factor of 4 to 5 improvement over what can be achieved by germanium at that energy. Meanwhile, at the other end of the temperature spectrum, the development of new, wide band-gap semiconductors has sparked research in room temperature gamma ray detectors and has held out the hope of 1 -2% resolution and freedom from cryogenics [2,3].With such results being reported from the X-and gamma ray world it is natural to examine the possibilities for neutron detection. A cryogenic neutron detector would operate by detecting the heat pulses caused by neutron capture and scattering, while a semiconducting detector would detect the nuclear reaction products from a sensitizer (for example, fission fragments detected in a 235 U-coated Si diode) or from some constituent of the semiconductor.In the following sections, the common methods of neutron detection are described and their deficiencies with respect to neutron spectroscopy at energies above thermal (0.025 eV) are outlined. Published work on neutron-detecting cryogenic calorimeters will be reviewed and work by the present authors on boron-and lithium-based instruments will be discussed. Turning to semiconductors, we review work with coated and native (uncoated) semiconductor, including Cd 1-x Zn x Te (CZT) and HgI 2 , as applied to neutron detection. Results obtained by the authors with HgI 2 will be shown.

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confidence: 99%

Neutron detection with cryogenics and semiconductors

Bell

Carpenter

Cristy

et al. 2005

phys. stat. sol. (c)

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“…The small number of counts, after placing the Cd foil in position may also be the result of unsuccessfully moderated non-thermal neutrons for the PuBe source. The boron carbide heterojunctions diodes were also found to be insensitive to a 60 Co gamma source [1,2].…”

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“…Semiconducting boron carbide represents a new class of semiconducting materials with potential applications in neutron detection and radioactive decay calorimetry [1][2][3][4][5][6][7]. Boron carbide thin fi lm diodes and devices have begun to attract attention as potentially highly effi cient solid state neutron detectors [8][9][10].…”

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confidence: 99%

“…A number of boron based conversion layer neutron detector diode devices have been fabricated [5,12,[16][17][18][19][20][21][22][23][24], as well as some heterojunction diode detectors [1][2][3]5]. Both the heterojunction diodes (where one side of the diode, usually the p-layer, contains boron) and conversion layer devices have pulse height spectra characteristic of strong contributions from 0.…”

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“…All boron carbide p-n junction diodes were also fabricated by chemical vapor deposition from two different isomers of closo-dicarbadodecaborane (closo-1,2-dicarbadodecaborane (orthocarborane, C 2 B 10 H 12 ) and closo-1,7-dicarbadodecaborane (metacarborane, C 2 B 10 H 12 )) that differ only by the carbon position within the icosahedral cage. The diodes were constructed using the process of PECVD (plasma enhanced chemical vapor deposition) as described for both heterojunction [1,[25][26][27][28][29][30] and homojunction diodes [25,26] of boron carbide, but with only carboranes and argon as the plasma reactor gases. The boron carbide semiconductor fi lms formed after decomposition are clearly self doping materials, since the deposition and decomposition involves only the metacarborane and orthocarborane source molecules (n-type and p-type, respectively), as discussed elsewhere [4].…”

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