DHS-STEM Summer Internship Report
Over the course of the last twelve weeks, I have been contributing to efforts in high efficiency solid state thermal neutron detection at Lawrence Livermore National Laboratory (LLNL) as a DHS HS-STEM intern. Reliable, high efficiency solid state thermal neutron detectors are desired to replace conventional 3 He gas filled tube technologies which have fieldability issues due to size, high operating voltage requirements, sensitivity to microphonics, and the recently rapidly diminishing supply of 3 He gas. Under the supervision of Rebecca Nikolić and Qinghui Shao, I have been developing an experimental plan to modify the doping profile of LLNL’s silicon-based pillar structured thermal neutron detector. The overall goal of this work is to reduce the capacitance and leakage current of the Pillar detector to enable the device area to be increased while maintaining a high thermal neutron detection efficiency.