Fabrication of Black Body Grids by Thick Film Printing for Quantitative Neutron Imaging

Martin Wissink, Kirk Goldenberger, Luke Ferguson, Yuxuan Zhang, Hassina Bilheux, Jacob Lamanna, David Jacobson, Michael Kass, Charles Finney, Jonathan Willocks

Research output: Contribution to journalArticlepeer-review

1 Scopus citations

Abstract

Neutron imaging offers deep penetration through many high-Z materials while also having high sensitivity to certain low-Z isotopes such as1 H,6 Li, and10 B. This unique combination of properties has made neutron imaging an attractive tool for a wide range of material science and engineering applications. However, measurements made by neutron imaging or tomography are generally qualitative in nature due to the inability of detectors to discriminate between neutrons which have been transmitted through the sample and neutrons which are scattered by the sample or within the detector. Recent works have demonstrated that deploying a grid of small black bodies (BBs) in front of the sample can allow for the scattered neutrons to be measured at the BB locations and subsequently subtracted from the total measured intensity to yield a quantitative transmission measurement. While this method can be very effective, factors such as the scale and composition of the sample, the beam divergence, and the resolution and construction of the detector may require optimization of the grid design to remove all measurement biases within a given experimental setup. Therefore, it is desirable to have a method by which BB grids may be rapidly and inexpensively produced such that they can easily be tailored to specific applications. In this work, we present a method for fabricating BB patterns by thick film printing of Gd2 O3 and evaluate the performance with variation in feature size and number of print layers with cold and thermal neutrons.

Original languageEnglish
Article number164
JournalJournal of Imaging
Volume8
Issue number6
DOIs
StatePublished - Jun 2022

Funding

Acknowledgments: This research used resources at the High Flux Isotope Reactor, a DOE Office of Science User Facility operated by the Oak Ridge National Laboratory. We acknowledge the support of the National Institute of Standards and Technology, U.S. Department of Commerce, in providing the neutron research facilities used in this work. Support for DOI 10.13139/ORNLNCCS/1870689 dataset is provided by the U.S. Department of Energy, project BB grids under Contract DE-AC05-00OR22725. Project BB grids used resources of the Oak Ridge Leadership Computing Facility at Oak Ridge National Laboratory, which is supported by the Office of Science of the U.S. Department of Energy under Contract No. DE-AC05-00OR22725. We acknowledge Eli Baltic for his assistance with the sample setup at NCNR BT2. Funding: This manuscript has been authored by UT-Battelle, LLC under Contract No. DE-AC05-00OR22725 with the U.S. Department of Energy. This material is based on work supported by the US Department of Energy (DOE), Office of Energy Efficiency and Renewable Energy, Bioenergy Technologies Office via the Systems Development and Integration program. Special thanks to DOE program manager Liz Moore, ORNL program manager Tim Theiss, and ORNL principal investigator Jim Keiser for their support. This work was partially supported by the U.S. Department of Commerce, the NIST Radiation and Physics Division, and the NIST Center for Neutron Research.

Keywords

  • black body grids
  • neutron imaging
  • quantitative imaging
  • scattering correction

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