Recent developments in deuterated scintillators for neutron measurements at low-energy accelerators

Deuterated (H-2-based) organic scintillators, unlike conventional H-1-based scintillators can generate pulse-shape gated neutron energy spectra 1 to 30 MeV without need for time-of-flight (ToF). They are especially appropriate for measurements at high-intensity, low-energy accelerators where a pulsed beam is not available. Even when the latter is available, the loss in effective beam intensity combined with the need for suitable long-path ToF measurements can be very inefficient. In contrast, as we demonstrate, arrays of d-benzene scintillators (NE230, BC537, EJ315) and recently xylene-d10 (EJ301D) together with related digital signal processing (DSP) can provide highly efficient neutron energy measurements w/o n-ToF. We also report the recent synthesis and initial testing of crystalline d-stilbene as a neutron detector. (C) 2017 Elsevier B.V. All rights reserved.