Development of a large area micro-structured solid-state neutron detector at low cost

The use of (He-3, BF-3) gas-based thermal neutron detector systems is limited by the cost, size, weight, and power requirements for many of the emerging applications. Therefore, the development of low-cost large-area solid-state neutron detectors for a wide range of civilian and defense applications is desirable. Solar cell type solid-state neutron detector using highly matured silicon technology would provide significant benefits in terms of cost, size, weight, and volume, and allow for wafer level integration with charge preamplifier and readout electronics. We present here the recent efforts on the fabrication of large area ¹⁰B filled honey-comb structured solid state thermal neutron detectors and detector modules with detection area up to 16 cm² that requires only a single pre-amp and shaping amplifier for data acquisition. The average leakage current density of 1 cm² area device is about 3×10^-8 Acm^-2 and neutron detection efficiency of ~29% for 0.0253 eV neutrons. For two stacked 1 cm² detector, the efficiency is about 46% with gamma efficiency of 0.001% above the discrimination level of 0.5 MeV.