Updated:
16.10.2011
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SANS I
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Small Angle Neutron Scattering Instrument at SINQ
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J. Kohlbrecher and W. Wagner, The new SANS instrument at the Swiss spallation
source SINQ, J. Appl. Cryst. (2000).
33, 804-806
V.K. Aswal, B. van den Brandt, P. Hautle, J. Kohlbrecher, J.A. Konter, A. Michels,
F.M. Piegsa, J. Stahn, S. Van Petegem, O. Zimmer, Characterisation of the polarised neutron beam at the small angle
scattering instrument SANS-I with a polarised proton target, Nucl. Instr. and Meth. A (2008), doi:10.1016/j.nima.2007.11.062
Instrument responsibles:
Joachim Kohlbrecher,Tel.:
+41 56 310 3165
Jorge Gavilano,Tel.:
+41 56 310 5473
SANS instrument: Tel.:+41 56 310 3186
All publications that are produced based on results obtained at SINQ should be registered by the
aid of the Digital User Office DUO. Please follow the link
' Register Publications'
from the DUO main menu. It is expected that PSI staff members acting as local contacts
during your experiments at SINQ are mentioned as co-authors in any publication that results from
data obtained at SINQ. In addition a certain acknowledgement statement is required from the
PSI directorate to ensure the finding of the papers in bibliographic databases, see below.
All publications based on SINQ data should contain the following text part:
'This work is based on experiments performed at the Swiss spallation neutron source SINQ,
Paul Scherrer Institute, Villigen, Switzerland.'
Due to the EU funding guidelines additionally to the above sentence those papers that are
based on results obtained from an experiment that was funded within th EU NMI3 access program
must contain the following sentence:
'This research project has been supported by the European Commission under the 7th Framework Programme
through the 'Research Infrastructures' action of the 'Capacities' Programme,
Contract No: CP-CSA_INFRA-2008-1.1.1 Number 226507-NMI3'.
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Small angle neutron scattering (SANS) is an ideal tool for
studying the structure of materials in the mesoscopic size range between 1 and
about 400 nm. Imaging methods such as transmission electron microscopy (TEM)
also have this capability to resolve inhomogenities of this length scale. They
provide images in real space, for instance pictures of individual grains in
a nanocrystalline material. SANS on the other hand is a non-destructive method
providing structural information averaged over all grains of different size
with high statistical accuracy due to averaging over the whole sample volume.
Often an average description of the sample is precisely what the experimentalists
need: for instance, the granularity of a catalystis is described directly by
SANS as an average value and there is no need to visualize each individual particle.
Using neutrons as probing particles has the advantage of being sensitive to
magnetic spins, allowing to resolve magnetic structures, and also to light elements,
in particular hydrogen/deuterium which remain invisible in TEM and x-ray small
angle scattering. The last property is crucial for many applications in biology
and polymer research.
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- biological molecules: proteins, ribosomes, DNA, etc.
- polymers: molecules, chains, blends and mixtures
- surface properties of catalysts
- colloidal suspensions
- metal physics: phase stability of alloys, precipitates, interfaces, grain
boundaries
- materials science: structural tailoring and testing, stability under load
- nanocrystalline materials: grain size, interface, porosity, magnetic nanostructures
- long range spin correlation
- flux lines in superconductors
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The small angle neutron instrument SANS covers the Q-range
from 6 x 10-3 nm-1 to 5.4 nm-1 and for the
detector displaced laterally by 50 cm up to 10.5 nm-1.This allows
the investigation of structures ranging from about 1 to 400 nm. The instrument
is installed at the curved neutron guide "1RNR16". The incoming neutrons are
monochromized by a mechanical velocity selector and collimated on a variable
length from 1 to 18 m. The two-dimensional ³He-detector with 128 x 128
elements of 7.5 x 7.5 mm² can be positioned at any distance between 1.4
and 20 m from the sample. Additionally it can be displaced laterally by 50 cm
inside the large vacuum vessel to increase the accessible Q-range at any detector
position. This option is combined with a rotation around its vertical axes to
reduce parallaxes effects. The memory card can store 1024 frames of 16k detector
elements to allow time resolved measurements.
The sample support consist of a remotely controlled xyz and rotation table for
mounting devices for working in air (e.g. sample changer, high pressure cell,
...) and a vacuum chamber (able to carry an electromagnet).
 click on figure
to see more details
view on the small angle spectrometer in the neutron guide hall
 click on figure
to see more details
Schematic view of the small angle spectrometer
 click on figure
to see more details
The main components of the SINQ small angle scattering facility
clickon figure to see more details
Intensity at sample position for the proposed 1 mA proton current of the
spallation source
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