Characteristics of a stilbene scintillation crystal in a neutron spectrometer

Abstract

Various organic scintillators are commonly used as the detecting material for neutrons, but these detectors are less sensitive to gamma rays. In particular, stilbene crystals and BC501A (NE213, EJ301) have good pulse-shape discrimination (PSD) between neutron and gamma-ray events, and have been selected as the media for fast-neutron detection among the organic, inorganic and plastic materials in a mixed radiation field. Although some of the scintillation characteristics of stilbene crystals have been studied, the detailed scintillation characteristics of the crystal are not completely understood. In this study, the light yield, decay time and. pulse shape discrimination capability of a stilbene crystal were measured because this crystal is an optimized detector in a large flux of neutrons such as those might be found in cyclotron and charged particle accelerator facilities. The pulse-shape discrimination of neutrons and gamma rays with a stilbene crystal was measured using a Cf-252 neutron source at room temperature. A neutron tagger module was used for the neutron and gamma separation using the charge comparison method in real time. The total pulse width for the charge integration and the delay from the peak-to tail start time were optimized for a better neutron and gamma separation. The relative light yield and decay time of the stilbene crystal scintillator were also measured.