Evaluation of gadolinium thin films for thermal neutron detection

The last decade has been driven by the quest for finding competitive alternative technologies to replace 3He based detectors for neutron detection. Gadolinium (Gd) is a promising rare earth element possessing the largest thermal neutron absorption cross section of all the stable elements. Scintillator material based on Gd shows high potential for the development of efficient and cost-effective detectors for thermal neutron detection. We have fabricated Gd based phosphors as thin film scintillator layers and applied them to a SiPM for thermal neutron detection. An MCA from Bridgeport Instruments is used with a commercial SiPM from Broadcom, the MCA connecting to a laptop computer running the software provided by the manufacturer for recording energy spectra and count rate. The thin films to be tested include Gd2O3:Eu3+, GdBO3:Eu3+, Li6Gd(BO3)3:Eu3+.