Manufacturing of boron thin films for the measurement of the 10B(n,α)7Li reaction in BNCT

Abstract

The Boron Neutron Capture Therapy (BNCT) has been considered for the treatment of different types of aggressive cancers located in areas of difficult access or which already presented metastasis. The working principle of this therapy is the selective delivery of boron to the tumor cells, followed by the neutron irradiation that will induce the emission of α particles through the 10B(n,α)7Li reaction used in BNCT. The high energy deposition rate of the product particles causes the death of the cells and this therapy becomes much effective if the healthy tissue is less exposed to this radiation. The objective of this work is to develop a method for measuring the rate of this reaction by using boron thin films that were manufactured with different concentrations of boric acid deposited over muscovite mica and then exposed to different irradiation time intervals at the reactor IEA-R1 located at IPEN, São Paulo. Here we show the first results on the density and uniformity of the boron thin films, where the detection of the particles is made using track detectors CR-39 and LR-115, their calibration and the first result for the 10B(n,α)7Li reaction rate measurement.