I. Introduction
THE Spallation Neutron Source (SNS) facility, due for completion at Oak Ridge in 2006, will push available thermal neutron flux at least an order of magnitude above that achievable at any other neutron science facility [1]. The increased flux imposes extreme rate requirements on the neutron detectors in many of the proposed instruments. Moreover, many of the SNS experiment stations require detector areas of several square meters. Detector requirements for the Small Angle Neutron Scattering (SANS) instrument, as an example, are listed in Table 1.