Design and development of a versatile remote controllable pulse shape discriminator for liquid and new generation plastic scintillator detectors

An Arduino based remote controllable pulse shape discriminator module has been designed and developed for neutron spectroscopic measurement. This module works on the principle of zero crossing method and can discriminate neutron/ γ -ray pulses from the liquid scintillator BC501A and the new generation plastic scintillator EJ276D. Different operational parameters of this module can be controlled remotely using the pulse width modulation technique. The module was tested with a liquid and plastic scintillator detector using radioactive and accelerator based neutron ( 7 Li(p,n) 7 Be) sources. A comparative study with the commercially available Mesytec MPD-4 module demonstrates better performance of the indigenously developed module in terms of discrimination capability for EJ276D. This is primarily due to the different pulse shaping utilized in two modules. Performance of the developed module was found to be optimum up to an event rate of 60 kHz beyond which its discrimination capability decreases.