A novel ceramic GEM used for neutron detection

Abstract

A novel ceramic Gas Electron Multiplier (GEM) has been developed to meet the demand of high counting rate for the neutron detection which is an alternative to 3He-based detector at China Spallation Neutron Source (CSNS). An experiment was performed to measure the neutron transmittance of ceramic-GEM and FR4-GEM at the small angle neutron scattering (SANS) instrument. The result showed the ceramic-GEM has higher transmittance and less self-scattering especially for cold neutrons. One single ceramic GEM could give a gain of 102-104 in the mixture gas of Ar and CO2 (90%:10%) and its energy resolution was about 27.7% by using 55Fe X ray of 5.9 keV. A prototype has been developed in order to investigate the performances of the ceramic GEM-based neutron detector. Several neutron beam tests, including detection efficiency, spatial resolution, two-dimensional imaging, and wavelength spectrum, were carried out at CSNS and China Mianyang Research Reactor (CMRR). The results show that the ceramic GEM-based neutron detector is a good candidate to measure the high intensity neutrons.