Boron-rich benzene and pyrene derivatives for the detection of thermal neutrons.

A synthetic methodology is developed to generate boron rich aromatic small molecules based on benzene and pyrene moieties for the detection of thermal neutrons. The prepared aromatic compounds have a relatively high boron content up to 7.4 wt%, which is important for application in neutron detection as (10)B (20% of natural abundance boron) has a large neutron induced reaction cross-section.