Replies Response to the ‘ ‘ Comment ’ ’ by S . Hallbeck et al .

The first half of the Comment by Hallbeck et al. about our recent paper [1] describes an all BC device, described in Ref. [2], that is unlike the BC–silicon detector we mentioned in our paper. Although their observations about their all BC device are interesting, they are nevertheless inconsequential to our assertions about a BC–Si detector [1]. The use of solid boron compounds for thermal neutron detection has been of considerable interest for many decades [3–10]. We encourage Hallbeck et al. to perform fundamental evaluations of the electrical properties of their BC materials, which are typically performed for all experimental semiconductor radiation detector materials, beginning with measurements of the charge carrier mobilities and mean-free-drift times. Moreover, the claim that neutrons were detected in a pure boron carbide device [2] is hard to assess, especially considering the absence of a clear description of the neutron source, detector dimensions and irradiation configuration. The authors of the Comment report the observation of an extremely small