Lithium fluoride crystal as a novel high dynamic neutron imaging detector with microns scale spatial resolution

Recently, a new field of application of optically stimulated luminescence of color centers (CCs) in lithium fluoride (LiF) crystals was proposed - using them for high-performance neutron imaging - and promising results were obtained (Matsubayashi et al., Nucl. Instrum. Methods A 622, 637 (2010) and Matsubayashi et al., Nucl. Instrum. Methods A 651, 90 (2011)). Here we present the overview of main findings, which clearly demonstrated that the LiF crystal performs efficiently as neutron imaging detector in areas, where a high spatial resolution with a high image gradation resolution is needed. It was shown that the obtained neutron images are almost free from granular noises, have spatial resolution of similar to 6 mu m, and have practically linear response with the dynamic range of at least 10(3). It was also found that the LiF crystal detector offers a fairly good sensitivity. Moreover, detailed evaluation using a standard sensitivity indicator for neutron radiography showed that two holes with less than 2% transmittance differences could be distinguished. Additionally, we recently demonstrated that the high resolution neutron imaging with LiF crystals could be useful for quantitative characterizations of neutron sources and electric devices, comprising of low-Z elements, for example, such as fuel cells. All of this gives new opportunity for microns scale spatial resolution imaging by neutrons. (c) 2012 WILEY-VCH Verlag GmbH & Co. KGaA, Weinheim