Improvement of the minimum detectable energy of a recoil-proton spectrometer based on a silicon telescope

A recoil-proton spectrometer based on a monolithic silicon telescope coupled to a polyethylene converter was recently proposed and discussed in the literature. The device consists of a ΔE and an E-stage detector (about 2 μm and 500 μm in thickness, respectively) made out of a single silicon wafer and separated by a highly-doped layer acting as a common electrode. The detection system allowed continuous neutron spectra to be measured down to about 400 keV by discriminating against the contribution of low-LET radiation generated by photons from the distribution of the energy deposited in the E stage. This discrimination was carried out by selecting detected particles, event-by-event, with a ΔE - E correlation. At neutron energies lower than 400 keV recoil-protons cannot reach the E stage owing to the thickness of the ΔE stage and therefore the discrimination failed. In order to further reduce the minimum detectable energy, an improved detection system, which also accounts for the energy deposited by recoil-protons in the ΔE stage, was studied and tested. The new set-up permits the total energy deposited in the telescope to be measured directly by collecting the charge carriers, generated in both stages, at the deep common electrode. The capability of reproducing continuous neutron spectra was also verified by irradiating the improved set-up with neutrons generated by protons striking a thick beryllium target at INFN - Laboratori Nazionali di Legnaro (Legnaro, Italy). The agreement of the unfolded spectra with literature data was satisfactory at energies higher than about 200 keV.