Silicon Photomultipliers With Scintillator for Thermal Neutron Detection

The Silicon Photomultiplier (SiPM) has become a solid playground for many applications requiring compact and well performing photon detectors. In particular, this is true when the detection of few photons with good time resolution is required. In this paper, we show how the SiPM features can be exploited to set up a compact neutron detector. By coupling two SiPMs to an inorganic scintillator strip, one can discriminate between gamma-rays and neutrons and, at the same time, determine the impact position with millimeter accuracy.