  The worldwide need to replace 3He for the neutron detection has triggered R&D
on new technologies and methods. A promising one is based on commercial solid
state silicon detectors coupled with thin neutron converter layers containing
6Li. After proving the feasibility of this technique, we characterized the
behavior of such a detector with different converter layer thicknesses. In this
paper we also disentangle other contributions to the overall spectrum shape
observed with this kind of detector, proving that its detection efficiency can
be made reasonably high and that the gamma/neutron discrimination capability is
comparable to the one of 3He tubes.
