A portable and wide energy range semiconductor-based neutron spectrometer

Hand-held instruments that can be used to passively detect and identify sources of neutron radiation—either bare or obscured by neutron moderating and/or absorbing material(s)—in real time are of interest in a variety of nuclear non-proliferation and health physics applications. Such an instrument must provide a means to high intrinsic detection efficiency and energy-sensitive measurements of free neutron fields, for neutrons ranging from thermal energies to the top end of the evaporation spectrum. To address and overcome the challenges inherent to the aforementioned applications, four solid-state moderating-type neutron spectrometers of varying cost, weight, and complexity have been designed, fabricated, and tested. The motivation of this work is to introduce these novel human-portable instruments by discussing the fundamental theory of their operation, investigating and analyzing the principal considerations for optimal instrument design, and evaluating the capability of each of the four fabricated spectrometers to meet the application needs.