Boron nitride, a neutron scintillator with deficiencies

During an electron beam evaporation accidentally sintered boron nitride was discovered to be a bright scintillating material. The high density boron nitride HDBN of Henze showed most promising results concerning light emission due to 8 keV electron radiation, due to bombardment with 5 MeV alpha particles, and due to 240 nm UV radiation. The light pulses generated in HDBN are similar intense as those generated in the well known /sup 6/Li glass scintillator. Because of the extremely strong absorption of thermal neutrons and the weak interaction with MeV gammas the material is an exciting new inorganic scintillator candidate for the detection thermal and epithermal neutrons. A series of properties of HDBN was measured with various methods. Many results are in favour an intended use of HDBN as scintillator. A few observations reveal deficiencies of this new scintillator and ask for further investigations.