Investigation of large LGB detectors for antineutrino detection

A detector material or configuration that can provide an unambiguous indication of neutron capture can substantially reduce random coincidence backgrounds in antineutrino detection and capture-gated neutron spectrometry applications. Here we investigate the performance of such a material, a composite of plastic scintillator and L-6(6)nat Gd((BO3)-B-10)(3) : Ce (LGB) crystal shards of as approximate to 1 mm dimension and comprising 1% of the detector by mass. While it is found that the optical propagation properties of this material as currently fabricated are only marginally acceptable for antineutrino detection, its neutron capture identification ability is encouraging. (C) 2011 Elsevier B.V. All rights reserved.