Study on the novel neutron-to-proton concept for improving the detection efficiency of triple GEM based fast neutron detector

Abstract

A high-efficiency fast neutron detector prototype based on a triple Gas Electron Multiplier (GEM) detector, which coupled with a novel multi-layered High-Density PolyEthylene (HDPE) as a neutron-to-proton converter for improving the neutron detection efficiency, is introduced and tested with the Am-Be neutron source in Institute of Modern Physics (IMP) at Lanzhou in present work. Firstly, the developed triple GEM detector is tested by measuring its effective gain and energy resolution with $^{55}$Fe X-ray source to ensure that it has a good performance. The effective gain and obtained energy resolution is 5.0$\times$10$^{4}$ and around of 19.2\%, respectively. And secondly, the novel multi-layered HDPE converter is coupled with the cathode of the triple GEM detector make it a high-effective fast neutron detector. And its effective neutron response is four times higher than that of the traditional single-layered conversion technique when the converter layer number is 38.