Materials Characterization with Cold Neutrons

Abstract

NIST has established at its Gaithersburg site the nation's first dedicated facility for ``cold neutron'' research (the CNRF). This new national facility is providing researchers in such fields as materials science, physics, chemistry, and biology state-of-the-art instrumentation which takes advantage of the unique properties of cold neutrons. As of May 1993, eleven of the planned fifteen new instruments were operational. One-quarter to two-thirds of total beam time is available for generic research at no charge to the general research community through a proposal evaluation system. The main focus of this paper will be on the principal techniques in which cold neutrons are currently used at the CNRF for nondestructive materials characterization: small-angle neutron scattering (SANS), neutron reflectometry, neutron depth profiling (NDP), and prompt-gamma activation analysis (PGAA).