Calibration of a neutron detector based on single event upset of SRAM memories

One of the challenges of measuring neutron fluences around medical linacs is the fact that the scattered photon fluence is important and higher than the surrounding neutron leakage fluence. Additionally most electron accelerators are pulsed, with repetition rates of the order of hundreds of Hertz, while the pulse duration is in the microsecond range. For this reason, neutron fluence around RT linacs is usually measured through passive methods, with the inconvenience of their time consuming analysis. A new neutron detector, based on the relation between Single Event Upsets (SEU) in digital SRAM memories and the existing thermal neutron fluence, has been developed. This work reports the calibration results of prototypes of this detector, obtained from exposures to the Physikalisch-Technische Bundesanstalt in Braunschweig (PTB) moderated Cf-252 source, to PTB quasi-monoenergetic neutron beams of 0.565 MeV, 1.2 MeV, 5 MeV, 8 MeV and 14.8 MeV, and to the GKSS thermal neutron beam. (C) 2010 Elsevier Ltd. All rights reserved.