Neutron scattering and diffraction methods are widely applied key tools for investigating the structure and dynamics of condensed matter at an atomic, molecular and mesoscopic level – complementary to synchrotron radiation scattering. With the strength of present neutron sources they are, however, flux-limited in most applications. Therefore, the advent of pulsed spallation neutron sources, driven by proton accelerators with multi-MW average beam power, promises great progress, however due to the orders of magnitude higher peak neutron fluxes also great challenges to the necessary detector and data acquisition technology.

For covering under these conditions the highest rate and resolution requirements for thermal neutron detectors, in the JRA DETNI prototypes of three novel modular micro-strip detector types as well as the necessary readout and data acquisition hard- and software are under development and are presently in the test phase. For coping with event rates per detector module of up to 10⁸ neutrons/s and two-dimensional position resolutions of up to 50-100 µm the detectors are nevertheless single-event counting and deliver sub-µs time-of-flight and thus neutron wavelength resolution, in contrast to existing high-resolution neutron detectors based on CCD cameras or image plates. The three detector modules developed in DETNI consist of

1. Silicon micro-strip detectors (Si-MSD) with two two-dimensional position-sensitive Si-MSD sandwiching a ¹⁵⁷Gd neutron converter layer per segment and four segments per module,


2. Two two-dimensional position-sensitive hybrid low-pressure micro-strip gas chamber (MSGC) detectors either side of a composite ¹⁵⁷Gd/CsI converter,


3. A double-stack of cascaded, with ¹⁰B-converter layers coated GEM (Gas Electron Multiplier) foils with central two-dimensional readout electrode (CASCADE).