There are two major types of devices used to form an electrical signal from scintillation or Cherenkov light: the photomultiplier tube and the photodiode. Photomultiplier tubes are vacuum tubes in which the first major component is a photocathode. A light photon may interact in the photocathode to eject a low-energy electron into the vacuum. The quantum efficiency of the photocathode is defined as the probability for this conversion to occur. It is a strong function of wavelength of the incident light, and an effort is made to match the spectral response of the photocathode to the emission spectrum of the scintillator in use. The average quantum efficiency over the emission spectrum of a typical scintillator is about 15 to 20 percent.

The result of sensing a flash of light is therefore the production of a corresponding pulse of electrons from the photocathode. Their number at this point is typically a few thousand or less, so that the total charge packet is too small to be conveniently measured. Instead, the photomultiplier tube has a second component that multiplies the number of electrons by a factor of typically 10⁵ or 10⁶. The electron multiplication takes place along a series of electrodes called dynodes that have the property of emitting more than one electron when struck by a single electron that has been accelerated from a previous dynode. After the multiplication process, the amplified pulse of electrons is collected at an anode that provides the tube’s output. The amplitude of this charge is an indicator of the intensity of the original light flash in the scintillator.

Alternatively, the light can be measured using a solid-state device known as a photodiode. A device of this type consists of a thin semiconductor wafer that converts the incident light photons into electron-hole pairs. As many as 80 or 90 percent of the light photons will undergo this process, and so the equivalent quantum efficiency is considerably higher than in a photomultiplier tube. There is no amplification of this charge, however, so the output pulse is much smaller. When the photodiode is operated in pulse mode, many sources of electronic noise are large enough to degrade the quality of the signal, and for a given scintillator a poorer energy resolution is usually observed with a photodiode than with a photomultiplier tube. However, the photodiode is a much more compact and rugged device, operates at low voltage, and offers corresponding advantages in certain applications. Scintillators coupled to photodiodes can also be conveniently used in current mode, especially for intense radiation fluxes. The current of electron-hole pairs induced by the scintillation light can be large enough to make noise contributions less important.

Slow-neutron detectors

The principal conversion methods for slow neutrons (see table) involve reactions that are characterized by a positive Q-value, meaning that this amount of energy is released in the reaction. Since the incoming slow neutron has a low kinetic energy and the target nucleus is essentially at rest, the reactants have little total kinetic energy. Consequently, the reaction products are formed with a total kinetic energy essentially equal to the Q-value. When one of these reactions is induced by a slow neutron, the directly measurable charged particles appear with the same characteristic total kinetic energy. Since the neutron contributes nothing to the kinetic energy of the reaction products, these reactions cannot be used to measure the energy of slow neutrons; they may only be applied as the basis for counters that simply record the number of neutrons that interact in the detector.

In the lithium-6 (⁶Li) and boron-10 (¹⁰B) reactions, the isotopes of interest are present only in limited percentage in the naturally occurring element. To enhance the conversion efficiency of lithium or boron, samples that are enriched in the desired isotope are often used in the fabrication of detectors. Helium-3 (³He) is a rare stable isotope of helium and is commercially available in isotopically separated form.

One of the common detectors for slow neutrons is a proportional tube filled with boron trifluoride (BF₃) gas. Some incident neutrons interact with the boron-10 in the gas, producing two charged particles with a combined energy of 2.3 MeV. These particles leave a trail of ion pairs in the gas, and a pulse develops in the normal manner as in any proportional counter. Boron trifluoride performs as an acceptable proportional gas only at pressures of less than one atmosphere, and the detection efficiency is therefore limited by the corresponding low density of boron nuclei at such pressures. Alternatively, a conventional proportional gas can be used, and the boron can be present in the form of a solid layer deposited in the inner surface of the tube.

Proportional counters filled with helium-3 also are based on a neutron interaction in the gas that produces charged particles. In this case, the Q-value of 0.76 MeV imparts this energy to the particles formed in the reaction. Helium works well as a proportional gas even at high pressure; thus helium-3 proportional tubes filled to 20 atmospheres or more provide neutron detection with relatively high intrinsic efficiency.

Also common are slow-neutron detectors in the form of scintillators in which either boron or lithium is incorporated as a constituent of the scintillation material. Europium-activated lithium iodide is one example of a crystalline scintillator of this type, and boron-loaded plastic scintillators are also available.

The fission reaction is often used as a neutron converter in conjunction with ion chambers. The enormous energy released in a fission reaction appears primarily as the kinetic energy of the two fission products. These fission fragments are highly ionizing charged particles, and they result in an unusually large energy deposition in the detector. Uranium-lined ion chambers (fission chambers) are common neutron sensors employed to monitor nuclear reactors and other intense sources of neutrons.