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Due to the shortage of the 3He gas and its rapidly increasing price, scintillator detectors, the advantages of which are high spatial resolution and capability of detection in real time, become widely used in many neutron instruments. In this work, a position-sensitive neutron detector consisting of a 6LiF/ZnS scintillation screen and a silicon photomultiplier array linked to a capacitive network to detect the positions of incident neutrons, is constructed and tested. To evaluate the detector performance, a series of neutron beam experiments with the detector prototype were performed in the BL20 at the China Spallation Neutron Source. The spatial resolution was measured, and the energy-selective neutron imaging and Bragg edge measurements of a 316L stainless steel sample were performed. A sub-millimeter spatial resolution could be obtained for the detector prototype under study. The detector with such a high spatial resolution is promising for applications in neutron scattering experimental installations, especially for neutron single-crystal diffractometers. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

A 256-channel time-of-flight electronics system has been developed for a facility called “Back-n white neutron source (WNS)” in China Spallation Neutron Source (CSNS). This paper presents the structure and performance of the electronics system and test results at CSNS-WNS. A piece of lithium glass scintillator, coupled with a 256-channel multi-anode photomultiplier tube, is placed at the center of the neutron beam line as the detector. A 256-channel readout electronics system, including one front-end board (FEB), four time-to-digital converter (TDC) cards and one clock distribution module (CDM), measures the arrival time of each signal from the detector. Signals are sent to FEB from the detector through 15-cm cables and discriminated on FEB. FEB drives differential signals over 2-m cables to the TDC cards. Each TDC card has 64 channels, using a field-programmable gate array (FPGA) to measure the arrival time of each signal. The CDM supplies clock signals to the TDC cards to make them work synchronously. The TDC cards and CDM are housed in one peripheral component interconnect (PCI) eXtensions for Instrumentation chassis. The TDC cards achieve a timing precision of 3.5 ns. The electronics system meets the requirement of the experiment and is currently being used in CSNS. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]