Superheated emulsion detector is known to detect neutrons, γ-rays and other charged particles. The present work includes the study of nucleation efficiency of super-heated drops of one of the CFC-free liquids, R134a (C₂H₂F₄), to fast neutrons, its response to 𝛾-rays from ²⁴¹Am and ¹³⁷Cs and compare its nucleation efficiency with that of R12. The observation indicates that because of the presence of hydrogen, the nucleation efficiency is less in R134a than in R12 in the present neutron energy range of considera-tion. R134a is one of the most environment-friendly, commercially available liquid that is suitable for superheated drop detector, specially in neutron dosimetry and one needs to investigate it in detail.

Energy calibration of superheated droplet detector is discussed in terms of the effective recoil nucleus threshold energy and the reduced superheat. This provides a universal energy calibration curve valid for different liquids used in this type of detector. Two widely used liquids, R114 and C₄F₁₀, one for neutron detection and the other for weakly interacting massive particles (WIMPs) dark matter search experiment, have been compared. Liquid having recoil nuclei with larger values of linear energy transfer (LET) provides better neutron-𝛾 discrimination. Gamma (𝛾) response of C₄F₁₀ has also been studied and the results are discussed. Behaviour of nucleation parameter with the effective recoil nucleus threshold energy and the reduced superheat have been explored.

Superheated drop detector consisting of drops of superheated liquid suspended in polymer or gel matrix is of great demand, mainly because of its insensitivity to β-particles and γ -rays and also because of the low cost. The bubble nucleation event is detected by measuring the acoustic shock wave released duringthe nucleation process. The present work demonstrates the detection of bubble nucleation events by using the pressure sensor. The associated circuits for the measurement are described in this article. The detection of events is verified by measuring the events with the acoustic sensor. The measurement was done using drops of various sizes to study the effect of the size of the drop on the pressure recovery time. Probability of detection of events has increased for larger size of the superheated drops and lesser volume of air in contact with the gel matrix. The exponential decay fitting to the pressure sensor signals shows the dead time for pressure recovery of such a drop detector to be a few microseconds.