Metalorganic chemical vapor deposition of hexagonal boron nitride on (001) sapphire substrates for thermal neutron detector applications

This paper reports on the growth and characterization of hexagonal boron nitride (hBN) and its use for solid-state thermal neutron detection. The hBN epilayers were grown by metalorganic chemical vapor deposition on sapphire substrates at a temperature of 1350 °C. X-ray diffraction peak from the (002) hBN plane at a 2θ angle of 26.7° exhibited the c-lattice constant of 6.66 Å for these films. A strong peak corresponding to the high frequency Raman active mode of hBN was found for the films at 1370.5 cm-1 hBN-based solid-state neutron detectors were fabricated and tested with a metal-semiconductor-metal configuration with an electrode spacing of 1 mm and hBN thickness of 2.5 μm. Fabricated detectors showed strong response to deep UV light as well. An intrinsic thermal neutron detection efficiency of 0.86% was measured, which is close to the theoretically expected efficiency of 0.87%. These results demonstrate that epitaxial hBN films are promising for thermal neutron detection applications.