Further Study of Boron-10 Loaded Liquid Scintillators for Detection of Fast and Thermal Neutrons

Abstract

Boron-10 loaded liquid scintillators were studied in order to improve n/¿ separation. Pulse shape discrimination (PSD) was implemented by means of a zero-crossing (ZC) method to distinguish between ¿-rays and fast/slow neutrons. Significant progress was done for BC523A2 and EJ339A2 scintillators loaded with reduced amount of <sup xmlns:mml="http://www.w3.org/1998/Math/MathML" xmlns:xlink="http://www.w3.org/1999/xlink">10</sup> B (2% and 2.5%, respectively), as compared to the results obtained earlier with BC523A loaded with 4.4% of <sup xmlns:mml="http://www.w3.org/1998/Math/MathML" xmlns:xlink="http://www.w3.org/1999/xlink">10</sup> B. The improvement was probably caused by the reduction of <sup xmlns:mml="http://www.w3.org/1998/Math/MathML" xmlns:xlink="http://www.w3.org/1999/xlink">10</sup> B content, as indicated in the reported study. A <sup xmlns:mml="http://www.w3.org/1998/Math/MathML" xmlns:xlink="http://www.w3.org/1999/xlink">10</sup> B loaded scintillator EJ309B5 based on non-flammable liquid was also studied, showing the best separation of thermal neutron capture events from fast neutrons, ¿-rays and noise.