Neutrons are widely used as probes of matter to study materials in a broad range of fields from physics, chemistry and medicine to material sciences. Any application utilizing neutrons needs to employ a well-understood and optimized neutron-detector system. This thesis is centered on fundamental aspects of neutron-detector development, including the establishment of the Source Testing Facility at Lund University, experimental methods for the in-depth characterization of scintillator-based neutron detectors and analytical and computational methods for the precise interpretation of results. It focuses on the response of liquid organic scintillators to fast-neutron and gamma-ray irradiations, specifically for NE 213A, EJ 305, EJ 331 and EJ 321P. A simulation-based method for detector calibration was developed which allowed for the use of polyenergetic gamma-ray sources in this low energy-resolution environment. With an actinide/beryllium neutron source and a time-of-flight setup, beams of energy-tagged neutrons were used to study the energy-dependent behaviour of the intrinsic pulse-shape of NE 213A and EJ 305 scintillators. The results demonstrated the advantages of the neutron-tagging method and how the combination of neutron tagging and pulse-shape discrimination can give deeper insight into backgrounds resulting from inelastic neutron scattering. A comprehensive characterization of the neutron scintillation-light yield for NE 213A, EJ 305, EJ 331 and EJ 321P was also performed. It employed the simulation-based calibrations to confirm existing light-yield parametrizations for NE 213A and EJ 305, and resulted in light-yield parametrizations for EJ 331 and EJ 321P extracted for the first time from data. In addition to the development of a simulation-based framework for the study of neutron-induced scintillation in organic scintillators, the methods and results presented in this thesis lay the foundation for future source-based neutron-tagging efforts and scintillator-detector research and development.

Organic scintillation detectors are useful for neutron spectroscopy because pulses induced by gamma rays and those induced by neutrons can be distinguished by electronic means. Computer analysis can be used to obtain the energy spectrum of the neutrons from the measured recoil-proton pulse-height distribution. The report describes a practical neutron spectrometer with improved electronic circuitry for pulseshape discrimination. A detailed study of the interaction of neutrons with the scintillator is presented in relation to pulse-height analysis. A computer program that uses a straightforward method of pulse-height analysis is given in FORTRAN with suggestions for adaptation for use on a small computer. Spectrometer applications are presented for measuring neutron spectra of monoenergetic neutrons, radioactive neutron sources, scattered neutrons and neutrons from a photonuclear reaction and also for detection of fission neutrons. (Author).

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