Neutron imaging detector with 2 μm spatial resolution based on event reconstruction of neutron capture in gadolinium oxysulfide scintillators.

We report on efforts to improve the achievable spatial resolution in neutron imaging by centroiding the scintillation light from gadolinium oxysulfide scintillators. The current state-of-the-art neutron imaging spatial resolution is about 10 μm, and many applications of neutron imaging would benefit from at least an order of magnitude improvement in the spatial resolution. The detector scheme that we have developed magnifies the scintillation light from a gadolinium oxysulfide scintillator, calculates the center of mass of the scintillation event, resulting in an event-based imaging detector with spatial resolution of about 2 μm.