Comparison of deuterated and normal liquid scintillators for fast-neutron detection

It is shown that, while the light output of the deuterated detector is lower than for the conventional non-deuterated detector, it is possible to detect 60 keV neutrons. The PSD capabilities of the deuterated detector match and surpass those of the NE213 detector. Its efficiency is comparable to that of the NE213 detector at neutron energies above 2 MeV; below that energy its relative efficiency suffers from the significantly lower n-d scattering cross-section. For very low neutron energies (<200keV), the relative efficiency of the deuterated detector increases again, due to the lower noise level for our particular detectors, showing the importance of low photomultiplier tube noise for the detection of low-energy neutrons.