NE Seminars

Thursday, September 18, 2003

• Ron Berliner
• ``Instrumentation for Neutron Diffraction"
• Abstract:
  
  When the unique properties of neutron are combined with the richness of the theory of diffraction, a host of applications in basic and applied science appear. One of the most pervasive of these has been neutron powder diffraction which, when combined with Rietveld refinement, forms a powerful tool for the study of the structure of new materials and the structure-property relationships in material families. It is particularly important for that large fraction of materials that cannot be prepared in single crystal form and must be studied using powder methods. Neutron powder diffraction research has benefited from the increase in the source flux as more powerful neutron beam sources came on-line. More important has been the evolution of the diffraction instrument which no longer resembles the simple, now long obsolete, single counter device of the 1950s. New diffraction instruments at reactors as well as pulsed sources employ elaborate means to prepare and optimize the incident neutron beam and large detectors to maximize the instrument count rates. While much of neutron beam research has migrated to the high-flux neutron beam laboratories, modern diffraction instruments sited at low-flux sources can still play an important role
  

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