Direct thermal neutron detection by the 2D semiconductor 6LiInP2Se6

Daniel G. Chica, Yihui He, Kyle M. McCall, Duck Young Chung, Rahmi O. Pak, Giancarlo Trimarchi, Zhifu Liu, Patrick M. De Lurgio, Bruce W. Wessels and Mercouri G. Kanatzidis ()
Additional contact information
Daniel G. Chica: Northwestern University
Yihui He: Northwestern University
Kyle M. McCall: Northwestern University
Duck Young Chung: Argonne National Laboratory
Rahmi O. Pak: Argonne National Laboratory
Giancarlo Trimarchi: Northwestern University
Zhifu Liu: Northwestern University
Patrick M. De Lurgio: Argonne National Laboratory
Bruce W. Wessels: Northwestern University
Mercouri G. Kanatzidis: Northwestern University

Nature, 2020, vol. 577, issue 7790, 346-349

Abstract: Abstract Highly efficient neutron detectors are critical in many sectors, including national security1,2, medicine3, crystallography4 and astronomy5. The main neutron detection technologies currently used involve 3He-gas-filled proportional counters6 and light scintillators7 for thermalized neutrons. Semiconductors could provide the next generation of neutron detectors because their advantages could make them competitive with or superior to existing detectors. In particular, solids with a high concentration of high-neutron-capture nuclides (such as 6Li, 10B) could be used to develop smaller detectors with high intrinsic efficiencies. However, no promising materials have been reported so far for the construction of direct-conversion semiconductor detectors. Here we report on the semiconductor LiInP2Se6 and demonstrate its potential as a candidate material for the direct detection of thermal neutrons at room temperature. This compound has a good thermal-neutron-capture cross-section, a suitable bandgap (2.06 electronvolts) and a favourable electronic band structure for efficient electron charge transport. We used α particles from an 241Am source as a proxy for the neutron-capture reaction and determined that the compact two-dimensional (2D) LiInP2Se6 detectors resolved the full-energy peak with an energy resolution of 13.9 per cent. Direct neutron detection from a moderated Pu–Be source was achieved using 6Li-enriched (95 per cent) LiInP2Se6 detectors with full-peak resolution. We anticipate that these results will spark interest in this field and enable the replacement of 3He counters by semiconductor-based neutron detectors.

Date: 2020
References: Add references at CitEc
Citations: View citations in EconPapers (3)

Downloads: (external link)
https://www.nature.com/articles/s41586-019-1886-8 Abstract (text/html)
Access to the full text of the articles in this series is restricted.

Related works:
This item may be available elsewhere in EconPapers: Search for items with the same title.

Export reference: BibTeX RIS (EndNote, ProCite, RefMan) HTML/Text

Persistent link: https://EconPapers.repec.org/RePEc:nat:nature:v:577:y:2020:i:7790:d:10.1038_s41586-019-1886-8

Ordering information: This journal article can be ordered from
https://www.nature.com/

DOI: 10.1038/s41586-019-1886-8

Access Statistics for this article

Nature is currently edited by Magdalena Skipper

More articles in Nature from Nature
Bibliographic data for series maintained by Sonal Shukla () and Springer Nature Abstracting and Indexing ().