Discrimination of Fast and Thermal Neutrons Using a Novel Phoswich Detector of LaCl3 and LiI:Eu Single Crystal Scintillators

A novel phoswich detector was set up by employing LaCl
₃
+ LiI:Eu single crystal scintillators and was characterized in detail for its performance with Am–Be, D–D, and D–T neutron sources. LaCl
₃
crystal shows transparency to the scintillation emission of LiI:Eu for light collection to photo multiplier tube (PMT). Thermal and fast neutrons were successfully discriminated by pulse shape discrimination (PSD) with high value of figure of merit of 5.5 due to significant difference of their scintillation kinetics.