Evaluation of ZnS:6LiF and ZnO:6LiF Scintillation Neutron Detectors Readout With SiPMs

It is generally accepted that the count rate capability of ZnS:
⁶
LiF neutron detectors is strongly limited due to the long afterglow of the scintillator. However, realized as an array of individual sensitive elements (pixels) with independent signal readout and processing, such detectors can be operated with blocking times down to 1 μs and promising counting rates up to 100 kHz/pixel. In this paper, we investigate how the long emission of the ZnS scintillator influences the detector performance apart from requiring a finite blocking time to suppress the probability of multiple counts. We also study the potential of the ZnO:
⁶
LiF scintillator with lower afterglow as a possible replacement of ZnS:
⁶
LiF.