LABORATORI NAZIONALI DI LEGNARO
Organic materials based on silicon rubbers are considered as favourite candidates for both thermal and fast neutrons detection since they overcome the problems encountered with commercially available liquid scintillators. The main issues that could be solved by the use of non-toxic, eco-friendly polysiloxanes as matrices for radiation sensitive materials are related to the high flammability of the currently used liquid solvents for neutrons/gamma detectors, their remarkably high degree of toxicity and the need for those liquid systems for bulky housing boxes, which in turn leads to geometrical/spatial limitations in their use in restricted spaces. Different samples, which have been compared with standard plastic (EJ212) or liquids (BC501) scintillators in terms of response and technical characteristics, have been studied within the ORIONE and HYDE experiment.Test with calibration alpha, gammas and neutron source will be presented together with in beam test experiment performed at the CN accelerator where a 4 MeV proton beam was interacting onto a LiF target to produce neutrons of about 2 MeV. Pulsed beam was used with a time resolution of 2ns to discriminate n-gamma by means of ToF measurement so to classify the two classes of signals for the subsequent pulse shape analysis. The latest results will be discussed.

DATA: 04-03-2013