Superheated Droplets Detector for Thermal Neutron Detection

Superheated droplet detectors (SDDs) are composed of superheated droplets suspended within a host gel and have been widely used for fast neutron dosimetry measurements. While these detectors have good sensitive to fast neutrons, they lack efficiency for the detection of thermal neutrons. For improving the sensitivity to thermal neutrons of SDDs, boron or lithium could be doped into the detector. To evaluate the potential intrinsic efficiency of such devices, simulations were performed on four different types of detectors (boron or lithium doped in either the droplets or the gel). The results show that the detector with B-10 doped in the droplets has the highest intrinsic detection efficiency for thermal neutrons. These results, verified with experiment, shall be presented in this paper.