Soft and hard matter high-resolution neutron spectroscopy at the Australian Centre for Neutron Scattering

On December the 19th, almost Christmas time,  from the Australian Nuclear Science  and Technology Organization (ANSTO), Nicolas De Souza came to the University of Zaragoza. Dr De Souza introduced the facilities the organization he belongs to, that are used to the study of neutron scattering through the seminar he held. Through this seminar he shared his expertise with EMU and  discussed data/analisys on past experiments with the other participants.

Please find below a seminar brief presentation :

“ The Australian Centre for Neutron Scattering operates a suite of 15 neutron instruments distributed across the thermal- and cold-sources of the OPAL reactor, ANSTO. Two of the cold instruments are optimized for quasielastic neutron scattering (QENS) measurements.

This presentation will highlight the scientific capabilities of the Emu backscattering spectrometer enabling access to microscopic, molecular dynamics up to about 5 ns time scale. Investigations of diffusive processes in organic make up the bulk of applications with that technique, while nuclear hyperfine splitting and quantum rotational tunneling studies are also possible.

A few examples from biophysics and polymer science will be presented [1,2]. There is also growing interest in understanding transport-related diffusion in inorganic materials related to energy applications, such as ionic conductors [3]. In addition to fully-fledged QENS studies, elastic- and inelastic- fixed window scans add versatility to backscattering spectroscopy, as further illustrated by a handful of recent high impact studies [4].

Finally, complementarity with other techniques, available ancillary equipment, and beam-time access will be discussed.”