Characterization of damage induced by heavy neutron irradiation on multilayered L6iF-single crystal chemical vapor deposition diamond detectors

High performance neutron detectors sensitive to both thermal and fast neutrons are of great interest to monitor the high neutron flux produced, e.g., by fission and fusion reactors. An obvious requirement for such an application is neutron irradiation hardness. This is why diamond based neutron detectors are currently under test in some of these facilities. In this paper the damaging effects induced in chemical vapor deposition (CVD) diamond based detectors by a neutron fluence of ∼2×1016 neutrons/cm2 have been studied and significant changes in spectroscopic, electrical, and optical properties have been observed. The detectors are fabricated using high quality synthetic CVD single crystal diamond using the p-type/intrinsic/Schottky metal/L6iF layered structure recently proposed by Marinelli et al. [Appl. Phys. Lett. 89, 143509 (2006)], which allows simultaneous detection of thermal and fast neutrons. Neutron radiation hardness up to at least 2×1014 n/cm2 fast (14 MeV) neutron fluence has been confirmed s...