Comparison of thermal neutron detection efficiency of 6Li scintillation glass and 3He gas proportional tube

We report on a comparison study of the He-3 gas proportional tube and the Li-6 incorporated scintillation glasses on thermal neutron detection efficiency. Both He-3 and Li-6 are used commonly for thermal neutron detection because of their high neutron capture absorption coefficient. By using a neutron source Cf-252 and a paraffin moderator in an alignment system, we can get a small beam of thermal neutrons. A flash ADC is used to measure the thermal neutron spectrum of each detector, and the detected number of events is determined from the spectrum, then we can calculate the detection efficiency of different detectors. Meanwhile, the experiment has been modeled with GEANT4 to validate the results against the Monte Carlo simulation.