An efficient and cost-effective microchannel plate detector for slow neutron radiography

A novel approach for efficiently imaging objects with slow neutrons in two dimensions is described. Neutron sensitivity is achieved by use of a boron doped microchannel plate (MCP). The resulting electron avalanche is further amplified with a Z-stack MCP before being sensed by two orthogonally oriented wire planes. Coupling of the wire planes to delay lines efficiently encodes the position information as a time difference. To determine the position resolution, slow neutrons were used to illuminate a Cd-mask placed directly in front of the detector. Peaks in the resulting spectrum exhibited an average peak width of 329 $\mu$m FWHM, corresponding to an average intrinsic resolution of 216 $\mu$m. The center region of the detector exhibits a significantly better spatial resolution with an intrinsic resolution of $<$ 100 $\mu$m observed.