It has been clearly demonstrated that the composite boron nitride (BN) semiconductor polycrystalline bulk detectors with BN grains embedded in a polymer matrix operate as an effective detector of thermal neutrons even if they contain natural boron only. A reasonable signal to noise ratio has been achieved with detector thickness of about 1 mm. A Monte Carlo simulation of neutron reactions in the BN detector was done to estimate the thermal neutron detection efficiency. The result was compared with widely used 3He based detectors to prove advantages of BN detectors, which are especially promising for neutron imaging and for large area sensors.

http://link.aip.org/link/?APPLAB/90/124101/1