In the last few years many detector technologies for thermal neutrondetection have been developed in order to face the shortage of 3He, which isnow much less available and more expensive. Moreover the 3He-based detectorscan not fulfil the requirements in performance, e.g. the spatial resolution andthe counting rate capability needed for the new instruments. The Boron-10-basedgaseous detectors have been proposed as a suitable choice. This and otheralternatives technologies are being developed at ESS. Higher intensities meanhigher signals but higher background as well. The signal-to-background ratio isan important feature to study, in particular the gamma-ray and the fast neutroncontributions. This paper investigates, for the first time, the fast neutronssensitivity of 10B-based thermal neutron detector. It presents the study of thedetector response as a function of energy threshold and the underlying physicalmechanisms. The latter are explained with the help of theoreticalconsiderations and simulations.
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