Digital discrimination of neutrons and γ-rays in a deuterated liquid scintillator using the Simplified Digital Charge Collection method

The neutron/γ-ray discrimination properties of a BC537 deuterated liquid scintillator in a mixed neutron/γ-ray Am–Be source field are investigated with the help of an 8-bit resolution and 2 GSamples/s sampling frequency high-speed digitiser. The Simplified Digital Charge Collection (SDCC) method used for the analysis provides an improvement over the digital charge comparison (CC) method in terms of the Figure of Merit (FoM) values. The FoM and the neutron to γ-ray counts ratio as functions of energy threshold are compared with those of a typical BC501A scintillator in the same mixed neutron/γ-ray radiation field. The results confirm that the BC537 is to be preferred to BC501A for γ-ray detection purposes.