Study of a metal-halide perovskite CsPbBr₃ thin film deposited on a ¹⁰B layer for neutron detection

Metal halide perovskite materials have received significant attention in recent years due to their promising properties and potential applications, particularly their use as scintillator detectors, which is rapidly emerging due to their promising advantages as detectors, such as low costs, fast response, high quantum yield, strong absorption, scalability, flexibility, and emission wavelength tunability. Given the effectiveness of perovskites as alpha particle detectors and the potential of B-10 as a neutron converter, in this paper a B-10 converting layer was coupled with an all-inorganic lead halide perovskite (CsPbBr3) layer aiming to create a thermal neutron detector. Specifically, a 1 mu m thin film of B-10 and a 1 mu m thin layer of CsPbBr3 were deposited on a suitable substrate using a laser ablation process. The fabricated detector was subjected to a comprehensive characterization, including structural, morphological, and detection properties. As output, the films exhibit macroscopically uniform behavior and good adhesion to the substrate. In terms of thermal neutron efficiency, an efficiency of (7.9 +/- 0.3)% was determined with respect to a commercial detector (EJ-426), which corresponds to an intrinsic efficiency of (2.5 +/- 0.1)%. Also, Monte Carlo simulations were conducted, and the optimum value of the B-10 layer thickness was found to be 2.5 mu m.