Development of a new pressure dependent threshold superheated drop detector for neutrons

In this paper, a set of superheated drop detectors operated at different pressures is developed and fabricated by adding an appropriate amount of Freon-12 liquid on the free surface of the detector. The fabricated detectors have been used for determination of the threshold pressure for 2.89 MeV neutrons of a neutron generator in order to estimate the thermodynamic efficiency. Finally, knowing the thermodynamic efficiency of the detector and in a similar manner, the threshold pressure for 241Am-Be neutrons is determined and accordingly, the maximum neutron energy of the source spectrum is estimated. The maximum neutron energy of the 241Am-Be is estimated as 10.97±2.11 MeV. The agreement between this measured maximum energy and the reported value of the 241Am-Be neutron source shows that the method developed to apply pressure on the superheated drop detectors can be used to control the energy threshold of these detectors.