Neutron/gamma discrimination and localization with pixelated plastic scintillators and SiPM dedicated multiplexing readout

International audienceThe development of instruments for measuring radioactivity and more particularly systems for characterizing and locating particles is an important issue in many fields, such as nuclear industry (gamma-neutron imaging and radiography) and medicine (scintigraphy, SPECT and PET), high-energy physics (tracking and calorimetry) and astrophysics (space observatory). These areas are not exempt from the need of technologies to reduce size and energy consumption along with the increase of durability. In this context, the use of silicon photomultipliers (SiPM), instead of a photomultiplier tube, addresses to these issues thanks to its compactness, modularity, low cost and robustness. Moreover, their assembly in a matrix form allows the position of interactions to be measured.The aim of this work is to develop a compact, scalable and position-sensitive neutron detector with high sensitivity based on a pixelated plastic scintillator (PS) and a SiPM array coupled with a multiplexing readout. The chemical composition of manufactured PS was chosen for its gamma/neutron discrimination abilities. The SiPM array used in these experiments is from SensL, the ArrayC-30035-16P . In order to minimize the number of channels to be digitized, we employed the multiplexing readout fro