Marine cyanobacteria are main contributors to carbon and nitrogen fixation, yet they are limited by iron availability. The most abundant and smallest photosynthetic organism on Earth is the cyanobacterium Prochlorococcus that can thrive in low nutrient waters. Interestingly, in contrast to most cyanobacteria that possess two FutA proteins to bind Fe(II) and Fe(III), Prochlorococcus has a...
To measure the gravitation pull on Antimatter, the AEgIS collaboration at CERN aims to perform moiré deflectometry on a beam of cold Antihydrogen. For such a measurement to be sufficiently accurate, the resulting fringe pattern needs to be resolved with micrometric accuracy. Here we present the technology and design considerations behind the OPHANIM detector, a purpose built Antihydrogen...
This contribution discusses the application of Diffraction Computed Tomography (DCT), including both X-ray and neutron probes, as a powerful method for non-destructive structural analysis in materials science. DCT uses a pencil-beam scanning technique to yield the reconstructed images of internal structure and chemical gradients of materials, extending the traditional imaging approaches. A...
Hydrogen atoms represent a large fraction of the total atomic content of macromolecules. Macromolecular X-ray crystallography affords the localisation of only the most ordered hydrogen atoms at (sub-)atomic resolution (around 1.2 Å or higher). However, many hydrogen atoms of biochemical significance remain undetectable by this method. Differently, neutron diffraction methods enable the...
LiCoO2 (LCO) has been proven for extensive commercial applications owing to its high specific capacity and stability. Therefore, there has been considerable interest in further enhancing its specific capacity by increasing the charging voltage. However, single-crystal LCO suffers from a significant capacity degradation when charged to 4.5 V due to the irreversible phase transition and unstable...
We have studied the heme-protein-lipid interaction with lipid bilayers. This is key for understanding the encapsulation of the iron binding heme-protein like myoglobin and phytoglobin, in lipid nanoparticles, LNPs. This type of heme-bound iron can be used to treat anaemia instead of iron in organic salts that is conventionally used. Encapsulation is needed to prevent unwanted proteolytic and...
This comprehensive study delves into the complex magnetic properties and interactions of the perovskite-like compound CaCu$_3$Ti$_4$O$_{12}$, employing advanced neutron scattering techniques and resonant inelastic X-ray scattering (RIXS) to explore the underlying spin-orbital coupling and single-ion anisotropy. By synthesizing high-quality single crystals and utilizing a four-circle neutron...
The Swiss-Norwegian beamlines at the European Synchrotron Radiation Facility have now been in user operation for almost three decades. Over the last decade, the scientific activities on the beamlines have become more and more focused on solving problems in materials science and crystal chemistry, that also implies an advent of new users with little experience in synchrotron experimentation....
Depth resolved positron annihilation Doppler-broadening spectroscopy (DBS) at
the top-most atomic layer of solid materials is a fundamental but largely
unexplored field of research. This is because it requires monoenergetic
positron beams with energies in the order of only a few of eV.
SLOPE (Setup for LOw-energy Positron Experiments) is specially designed for
a low energy beam, enabling...
LumaCam detectors have a structure resembling many established scintillator-based imaging detectors. The key difference is the imaging chip being fast enough to identify the individual scintillaton photons produced by a neutron interaction in the scintillator screen. This information can be used to provide enhanced spatial and temporal resolution, as well as noise suppression and particle...
Nickel-aluminum bronze (CuBz) alloys are widely used due to their excellent mechanical properties and corrosion resistance. To enhance their use in high-value applications and lower the part replacement costs, improving their surface wear resistance is essential. Metal matrix composite (MMC) coatings have shown promise in this regard. One approach involves laser melting injection (LMI) of...
Pyrochlore magnets (R₂M₂O₇), with rare-earth ions arranged on corner-linked tetrahedra, are key to understanding magnetic frustration. These systems display diverse magnetic behaviors, including spin ice and spin liquid. Recently, researchers are exploring exotic magnetism by chemically manipulating or diluting these spin systems. We present magnetization and neutron-scattering measurements on...
To increase neutron flux on small samples, we are developing a nested mirror optic (NMO) array for the PUMA thermal triple-axis spectrometer. This device is intended to reduce the beam size to 5 mm x 5 mm while preserving 50% of the incoming neutrons, resulting in an 8-fold increase in the flux available for small samples. However, the complex neutron flight paths generated from novel optics...
Within the DAPHNE4NFDI consortium MLZ has been working on providing a FAIR data access option. The central part will be the MLZ datacatalogue ( which should be available before the Usermeeting).
We will show how the data in the catalogue look like, how you can really access it and a give an outlook on the coming data access options.
Polarized neutron diffraction is proven to be a powerful tool for studies of magnetic structure and microscopic dynamics of matter. This is assured by the success of the XYZ-polarization analysis technique, which lays the basis for separation of coherent, incoherent, and magnetic contributions to the scattering cross section. Even though polarized diffraction can provide a more robust...
Ba3MA2O9 compounds have gained significant attention due to various exotic magnetic ground states depending upon the various combinations of M and A atoms. For instance: Ba3NiSb2O9, Ba3CuSb2O9, and Ba3IrTi2O9 exhibit quantum spin-liquid behavior [1-3], while Ba3ZnIr2O9 [4] shows a quantum spin-orbital liquid state. However, the magnetic ground of these compounds with M = rare-earth and A = 4d...
Recent developments of scintillator-based event-driven detectors have opened up the possibility of utilizing AI to identify single neutron events from sparse data readout. A crucial aspect for AI-based event detection is to provide training datasets that can be utilized to accurately train a neural network. Such training datasets require a “ground-truth” to avoid errors in the event...
Small-angle neutron scattering is useful for probing nanometer-scale structures but inhomogeneous materials like ball-milled powders used for hydrogen storage often yield fairly featureless diffraction patterns that are difficult to interpret [1]. Despite this, such patterns can still reveal important information. To explore this, Aslan et al. conducted an in situ investigation, measuring...
I will review the main works done in the last years by my research group in collaboration with the researchers of NEPOMUC. These works include studies on vacancy like defects in silicon based materials, oxides, materials for hydrogen storage and soft matter.
At the light of the obtained results I will discuss the experimental requirements for a new class of measurements in material science at NEPOMUC.
The symmetry of the material is an important factor determining its properties. In this work, we demonstrate [1] both experimentally and by numerical simulations that the actual symmetry of the rutile phase of TiO2 is CaCl2-type [2] orthorhombic, described with space group Pnnm, in contrast to what it is commonly believed that rutile TiO2 has a tetragonal symmetry [2-4], described with space...
Neutron imaging with cold and thermal neutrons typically use scintillator screens that use lithium-6 as a neutron converter. Compared to lithium-6, boron-10 offers nearly four time higher neutron absorption cross-section and larger daughter products that deposit their energy locally, offering the potential for higher neutron capture efficiency and spatial resolution. Screens were fabricated...
Organic-inorganic halide perovskites have gained a huge interest in the scientific community owing to their favorable optoelectronic properties combined with their ease of production and abundance of raw materials. In many cases, polycrystalline thin films are fabricated for which thin film crystallinity and morphology are key factors affecting the perovskite properties. In this work, we...
LaCoO$_3$ has been the subject of an intense investigation due to its intriguing transformation from a nonmagnetic insulator at low temperatures to a paramagnetic semiconductor, followed by an insulator-to-metal crossover. The nature of these transitions is the topic of long-standing and ongoing discussions. Generally, these crossovers are associated with the population of Cobalt low-spin (S =...
Pulsed low-energy positron beams of variable energy are powerful
tools for defect profiling in materials with positron annihilation lifetime spectroscopy (PALS). The UniBwM operates two pulsed positron beams at NEPOMUC: The Pulsed Low-Energy Positron System (PLEPS) for depth-resolved (1D-)defect profiling and the Scanning Positron Microscope (SPM), which in addition offers lateral micrometer...
Pt/Co/Pt and Pd/Co/Pd heterostructures with perpendicular magnetic anisotropy (PMA) are traditionally used for magnetic recording. PMA can be tuned by e.g. thin film thickness, strain, ion bombardment or temperature. Recently, it has been shown that the absorption of hydrogen in the heavy metal modifies the interfacial spin-orbit coupling and hence reduces the PMA.[1-3] As a result, reversible...
Microplastics have become a pressing issue due to their accumulation in aquatic and terrestrial environments and their presence in the food chain. In this talk, I will present the studies undertaken to flocculate a model microplastic system, viz., polystyrene latex suspension. This system, comprised of ~140 nm polystyrene spheres (microplastic) dispersed in water, was flocculated using...
Microgels - crosslinked polymer networks swollen in a good solvent - have been used to investigate the effect of compressibility on crystal and glass formation, and on its relation with the flow proprieties of the suspensions [1]. Their compressibility strongly affects microgels at interfaces [1, 2]. Here, poly(N-isopropylacryamide) (pNIPAM)-based microgels are confined at the oil- and...
The aim of our research is to achieve a fundamental understanding of compressible soft materials, both static and under flow, and use this knowledge to further develop bio-relevant colloids. An object's bulk modulus K quantifies its resistance to an isotropic compression. For deformable colloids, K must be known to predict their response to crowding. Here, we will first present a new approach...
At the FRM II a UCN source with a solid deuterium converter and solid hydrogen premoderator, placed in a distance of ∼ 60 cm from the central fuel element inside the horizontal, through-going beam tube SR6, is currently under construction. It is supposed to generate UCN densities of 1000 - 10000 UCN per cubic centimeter in up to four connected experiments. This talk will give an overview of...
We investigated a quasi-binary liquid of 3-methyl pyridine and heavy water at the critical composition at different temperatures close to the phase transition. When adding antagonistic salt sodium tetraphenylborate the ions form locally lamellar structures that enclose the binary fluid. Then the system becomes 2-dimensional. Looking at the critical fluctuations, the dimensionality is...
The AEgIS experiment at CERN aims to measure the acceleration of cold antimatter in earth's gravity field by determining the vertical displacement of the beam. An important part of the experimental setup is a detector, that can determine the position of the antimatter particles. For this purpose, the Ophanim detector - a CMOS sensor with 3.85 billion pixels - is developed.
In order to...
The Proton Electron Radiation Channel (PERC) experiment will investigate the decay of the neutron by observing spectra of the emerging electrons and protons, and several correlations between neutron spin, and the electron, proton, and neutrino momenta. Its aim is in particular to improve on the parity violating beta asymmetry, and the Fierz term by an order of magnitude. PERC is under...
Magnonics is a multidisciplinary field of research focusing on the study and application of magnons in information processing and technology [1]. Magnons can carry the spin information through thermally generated spin-wave spin currents over the large distances [2]. Insulating antiferromagnets (AFMs) are promising for next-generation high-density and high-speed spintronic applications due to...
Ti-6Al-4V is the workhorse among all titanium alloys that are processed by solidification-based AM technologies. Its popularity resides from its interesting combination of quasi-static and dynamic mechanical properties, and its relatively low density, making it a candidate material for lightweight applications.
The structural performance of L-PBF processed Ti-6Al-4V parts, however, is heavily...
The metal halide perovskites (MHPs) are attracting intense research interest due to their excellent optoelectronic properties. The all-inorganic member CsPbBr$_3$ is of particular interest for gamma-ray detector applications and LEDs. Further, single crystals can be grown via a solution route or by a melt process, and thin films can be solution processed or produced by vapour deposition....
PEDOT:PSS is a water-dispersable and electrically conductive polymer blend that is increasingly applied in numerous fields such as batteries and super-capacitors. While many studies focus on performance optimization, degradation issues because of humid environments are rarely discussed: PEDOT:PSS absorbs significant amounts of water (~50 wt%), which leads to a pronounced swelling factor of up...
Waterborne latex films, obtained from the dispersion of latex particles are of particular interest due to the non-content of volatile organic compounds (VOC), often mandatory under environmental legislation. However, abrupt water penetration inside the films restricts their lifespan and deteriorates the shine of the coating. In order to prepare efficient and solvent-free coatings with the low...
The APEX collaboration seeks to create positron-electron plasma by injecting positrons into an electron plasma, a thorough understanding of the electron plasmas. We present design and initial tests of a new diagnostic for the APEX-LD, which enables the measurement of the electric potential of the trapped plasma by injecting electrons along the axis. This information will augment the...
PANDA is the cold three-axis spectrometer (TAS) at MLZ, successfully serving scientists from around the world since 2005. In preparation for continued user operations, the instrument has undergone comprehensive maintenance and upgrades. It is now equipped with a new PG-002 monochromator, a versatile sample table capable of supporting cryomagnets, and an ADR cryostat operating from room...
Polysaccharide polymers constitute the fundamental building blocks of life and display a diverse set of conformations; the origins of which need further understanding. Utilising a model high molecular weight, high Trouton ratio bottlebrush-like 'pectin' polysaccharide extracted from okra (Abelmoschus esculentus) mucilage, we combine theoretical (molecular dynamics simulation) and experimental...
NICOS, the Networked Instrument Control System, is the standard experiment control software developed and used by MLZ, and has been successfully implemented at other facilities like PSI and ESS. Its high degree of adaptability makes it feasible to provide a good user experience while keeping development effort manageable through the use of a strong shared core codebase.
In this poster, we...
Magnetic dipole traps have demonstrated good confinement properties for both non-neutral and quasi-neutral plasmas, making this a highly suitable type of trap for the creation and study of low-temperature, long-lived electron-positron pair plasmas. To generate such a plasma, the APEX (A Positron-Electron eXperiment) Collaboration is planning to inject positrons (supplied by the reactor-based...
Photopolymerization offers excellent spatial resolution, low energy consumption and high curing speeds, making it a widely used industrial technology with great potential in additive manufacturing application. The kinetics of spatial and temporal nanostructural evolution and the interfacial formation in resin multilayers are the key to achieve controllable and high-precision manufacturing. In...
Since the first breakthrough of perovskite solar cells by using a solid-state structure, the solar cell’s power conversion efficiency has increased from 9.7% to >26%. These exciting improvements are mainly attributed to achieving a pinhole-free thin film at the beginning and an increased understanding of microstructures on perovskite thin films. In addition, the rapid PCE improvement has been...
We developed a modular apparatus to polarize neutrons in situ at the Los Alamos Neutron Science Center using spin-exchange optical pumping. This technique requires the use of a glass cell filled with helium-3 gas and rubidium metal, which is heated until the rubidium is vaporized. An external magnetic field is applied, and the rubidium vapor is excited using a 795 nm, 50 watt laser, which is...
The KWS-2 is a classical pinhole SANS diffractometer for the investigation of complex mesoscale morphologies and rapid structural changes in soft condensed matter and biophysical systems. By combining pinhole mode, focusing mode with lenses and WANS mode with detection capabilities up to 2$\theta$ = 50°, the instrument enables exploration of a wide Q range from 2.0×10$^{-4}$ - 2.0 Å$^{-1}$ and...
The textures of the β- and α-phases of the metastable β-titanium alloy Ti5321 after hot deformation were investigated by neutron diffraction. A hot-rolled bar was solutionized in the β-phase field and then hot compressed above and below the β-transus temperature. The initial texture after full recrystallization and grain growth in the β-phase field exhibits a weak cube component {001}<100> and...
In 2023 we published an innovative positron detection technique based on direct detection using CMOS imaging sensors. That work did set the resolution record for real-time detectors but possibly not for non-realtime devices. We present our latest improvements on the result, which yield the highest spatial resolution ever achieved while detecting positrons.
Cellulose, a well-known natural biopolymer, possesses numerous advantages such as cost-effectiveness, renewability, ease of processing, and biodegradability [1]. Due to these inherent merits, cellulose has emerged as a promising bio-based substrate capable of synergistically combining with conductive materials (e.g., metals or carbon-based materials) for diverse applications including sensors,...
Defects at internal interfaces pose a major concern for layered heterostructures. For example, in a MOSFET the defects at the SiO2/Si interface can introduce charge traps, which can degrade the electronic performance of the device. The defects in Metal-Oxide-Silicon (MOS) systems were extensively researched using depth-resolved beam-based positron-annihilation techniques. Unfortunately, the...
The neutron spin echo spectrometer J-NSE "PHOENIX" is presented together with the most recent scientific examples. Mostly, the slow motion on molecular length scales of proteins in solution and polymers in the melt or in solution are measured. Recent publications in this area include experiments on asymmetric tubes in a polymer melt, on the effect of crowding in solutions of single chain...
Neutron polarization analysis provides profound additions of knowledge to the field of soft condensed matter research. The ability to separate the coherent and incoherent scattering contributions gives information on spatial correlations and collective motion, and information from single particles, respectively.
In this study, we focus on upgrading the SPHERES (SPectrometer for High Energy...
The Jülich Center for Neutron Science (JCNS) institutes conduct cutting-edge experiments leveraging various techniques. These experiments generate diverse and complex datasets, varying significantly in type, format, and volume due to the range of instruments used both within and outside the institutes. The heterogeneous nature of the data—from raw measurements to processed results—creates...
It is crucial to suppress the non-radiation recombination in the hole-blocking layer (HBL) and at the interface between the HBL and active layer for performance improvement. Herein, TiOx layers are deposited onto a SnO2 layer via sputter deposition at room temperature, forming a bilayer HBL. The structure evolution of TiOx during sputter deposition is investigated via in situ grazing-incidence...
TRISP is currently relocated to the guide hall east, and the length of the polarizing neutron guide increases from 10 m to 30 m. Transmission losses of this longer guide are minimized in the thermal spectrum range (1-4 Å) by a ballistic guide with parabolic and elliptic sections at the input and output, each 13 m long. The straight transmission polarizer in the center (4 m length) shows very...
The author will present the actual status of the work at the MEPHISTO beamline. The installation of the neutron guide shielding in the reactor building and in the intermediate structure are advancing. The cooling plant is progressing with the construction of the compressor tower.
POWTEX is a high-intensity time-of-flight diffractometer for POWder and TEXture analysis, which will serve the needs of the solid-state chemistry, geoscience, and materials science communities. The important part of the data processing workflow at POWTEX is data reduction, which implies a correction of the collected data by experimental artifacts that are caused by the instrument itself or its...
The present work investigates crystallographic and magnetic structures of post-annealed magnesium ferrite (MgFe2O4) powder using Neutron diffraction within a temperature range from 10 K to 300 K. The obtained crystallite and domain size variations show a robust correlation with the changes in magnetic properties, as determined by temperature-dependent magnetic measurements. Further, the study...
Hydrogen storage in light hydrides for mobile applications is a widely discussed but highly controversial topic. Is it safe enough? Is it effective enough? Does hydrogen energy have a future? The questions are numerous and multifaceted but almost none of them has a clear answer so far. A complex hydride system 6Mg(NH2)2:9LiH with LiBH4 as a dopant is one of promising candidates on a role of...
The PERC facility is currently under construction at the FRM II in Garching, Germany. It will serve as an intense and clean source of electrons and protons from neutron beta decay for precision studies. It aims to improve the measurements of the properties of weak interaction by one order of magnitude and to search for new physics via new effective couplings.
PERC's central component is a 12...
Located at the SR10 at the FRM II, NECTAR is a versatile instrument and designed for the non-destructive inspection of various objects by means of fission neutron radiography and tomography. Compared to the Z-dependency of X-ray and gamma imaging, fission neutrons have the strong advantage of often providing similar contrast for heavy and light materials. Only few facilities around the world...
A persistent challenge for inelastic neutron scattering is the low scattering cross-section of neutrons, necessitating larger sample sizes compared to other techniques. Focusing the neutron beam is a viable method to increase the flux and the nested mirror optic (NMO) is an ideal solution, providing a small, well-behaved beam at the sample position while maintaining space for sample...
The single-crystal diffractometer HEiDi at MLZ offers a broad spectrum of thermal and hot neutrons, excellent resolution, access to a large region of reciprocal space, low absorption and high sensitivity for light elements, making it a versatile tool for extended studies on many structures for nowadays topics in solid state physics, chemistry & mineralogy.
A key feature of HEiDi is its sample...
Transmission electron microscopy (TEM) is used to produce images by illuminating a sample with an electron beam in a high vacuum. That makes it a powerful technique i.a. in soft matter studies. With the TEM, real space investigations are performed to obtain knowledge about particles shape, size and size distribution, self-assembly and aggregation.
The JCNS Transmission Electron Microscopy...
Positron annihilation lifetime spectroscopy (PALS) is a powerful tool in a wide range of material science. To investigate inhomogeneous defect distributions, e.g. close to fatigue cracks or dispersive alloy, with PALS a monochromatic pulsed positron beam of variable energy with a diameter in the range of 1 µm and a time resolution of 200 ps FWHM is needed.
To this aim, the Scanning Positron...
Hydrogen plays a crucial in the ongoing transformation of the energy and mobility sector and is expected to become increasingly significant as a fuel for gas turbines. Key components of gas turbines are constructed from superalloys, making it essential to understand the impact of hydrogen on these high-temperature materials.
In this study, hydrogen embrittlement in a CoNiCr-based superalloy...
Coincidence Doppler Broadening Spectroscopy requires the use of high purity Germanium detectors cooled to approximately 100K as these possess an excellent energy resolution for the analysis of the positron-electron annihilation radiation. To increase the overall detection efficiency the available solid angle should be covered by as many detectors as possible. Conventional cooling with large...
Neutron single crystal diffraction provides an experimental method for the direct location of hydrogen and deuterium atoms in biological macromolecules. At the FRM II neutron source the neutron single crystal diffractometer BIODIFF, a joint project of the Forschungszentrum Jülich and the FRM II, is dedicated to the structure determination of enzymes. Typical scientific questions address the...
Packing spheres has long been a key topic in science. While hard spheres often form dense, close-packed structures like face-centered cubic (FCC) lattices, soft spheres, such as block copolymers in selective solvents, tend to arrange into less dense structures. However, when using block copolymer templates in the sol-gel method, these soft spheres can achieve close-packed structures. In this...
Both LLZO and LATP are leading solid state electrolyte candidates because of their excellent characteristics, such as high ionic conductivity and wide electrochemical stability windows. However, their interfaces with Li metal anodes face stability challenges which hinders their application in solid-state lithium batteries.
In case of LLZO, we explore the differences between Al- and Ga-doped...
KWS-3 "VerySANS" is a very-small-angle-neutron-scattering diffractometer using a focusing mirror to achieve a high Q-resolution 3·10$^{−5}$ $Å^{−1}$. In “standard mode” with Q-range between 10$^{−4}$ and 2.5·10$^{−3}$ Å$^{−1}$ KWS-3 demonstrates worldwide best performance: intensity much higher than any pinhole SANS instrument and measurement time much shorter than any Bonse-Hart camera....
QTISAS is a versatile software package designed for the analysis and modeling of small-angle scattering (SAS) data, specifically for neutron and X-ray scattering experiments. Built with a user-friendly graphical interface and advanced computational algorithms, QTISAS facilitates the interpretation of scattering data from diverse sample types, including complex fluids, polymers, biological...
This paper describes the design, construction and testing of a new ${}^{22}$Na isotope based sample-source setup called Single Specimen Positron Annihilation Spectroscopy (SSPAS) for measurements at the Coincidence Doppler Broadening Spectrometer (CDBs) positioned at the NEutron induced POsitron source MUniCh (NEPOMUC) beam line. Coincidence Doppler Broadening Spectroscopy (CDBS) measurements...
Data reduction is a crucial prerequisite to data analysis in neutron scattering experiments; in the case of single crystal diffraction, it involves the reduction of a set of images at fixed sample rotation increments to a set of Miller indices and detector coordinates. However, the available mature software solutions for this problem are either legacy codes, converted from X-ray diffraction,...
Neutron and X-ray scattering experiments provide valuable insights into the nanoscopic properties of matter, a scale that is also accessible through Molecular Dynamics (MD) simulations. If the simulations reproduce the experiments, they can give greater insight into the material properties on the nanoscopic scale than traditional data analysis methods. However, existing MD forcefields are...
The PERC (Proton and Electron Radiation Channel) experiment is part of the new generation of high-precision measurements of angular correlations in neutron beta decay. Among the different approaches, the CRES (Cyclotron Radiation Emission Spectroscopy) technique is a perfect match for PERC, given it provides a highly precise frequency-based electron spectroscopy and it is non-destructive. The...
The PERC (Proton and Electron Radiation Channel) facility, located at the neutron source FRM II of the Technical University of Munich (TUM), serves as a clean source of neutron decay products, namely protons and electrons. PERC aims to contribute to the determination of the Cabibbo-Kobayashi-Maskawa quark-mixing element (V𝑢𝑑), measure the correlation coefficients of free neutron decay (𝑎, 𝐴,...
The application of artificial intelligence (AI) is a growing field, especially with artificial neural networks (ANN). These tools are helpful for various applications, one of them being the optimization of data processing routines for detectors, from only optimizing classical processing algorithms in speed and efficiency to paving the way to new possibilities.
With this perspective in mind,...
Additive manufacturing (AM) has become increasingly popular in different applications where complicated geometries, weight reduction, and customized performance are desired. The additive nature of manufacturing provides an edge over conventional manufacturing processes regarding complex shapes, customized designs, and depositions. Internal defects like lack of fusion (LOF), cracks, and voids...
We present the time-of-flight spectrometer TOPAS being assembled in the neutron guide hall east. It is optimized for mapping excitations in large areas of the reciprocal space utilizing thermal neutrons. The chopper system is designed to deliver neutrons in the thermal energy range, which allows for energy transfers up to 50 meV on the neutron energy loss side, and resolution around 5% of the...
At MLZ, various methods are available for chemical analysis with neutrons which enable highly sensitive determination of the element composition in a wide range of sample matrices. The classic methods of prompt gamma activation analysis and instrumental neutron activation analysis are available at the PGAA and NAA instruments. In addition, setups for neutron depth profiling (NDP), in-beam...
The Data Analysis group DEVA was established in 2022. It provides support for processing and analyzing experimental data recorded with MLZ instruments. This service is specifically designed to support occasional and new users. In this context, the group also assists in the preparation of related publications. Currently, DEVA covers diffraction, small-angle scattering, imaging and elemental...
As part of the DAPHNE4NFDI project, the DAPHNE Vision network promotes the cross-community collaboration among young scientists working on data processing with photon and neutron sources. It encourages the exchange of knowledge and experiences, helping participants benefit from each other's expertise and fostering new ideas and solutions.
DAPHNE Vision also aims to adapt solutions to...
DAPHNE4NFDI is a consortium within the Nationale Forschungsdaten Infrastuktur (NFDI) in Germany, dedicated to the development of data management tools and best practices for research data from Photon and Neutron (PaN) sources. The consortium's tasks include collecting and documenting data and metadata during the experiment with the aim to develop the FAIRness (Findability, Accessibility,...
LumaCam detectors have a structure resembling many established scintillator-based imaging detectors. The key difference is the imaging chip being fast enough to identify the individual scintillaton photons produced by a neutron interaction in the scintillator screen. This information can be used to provide enhanced spatial and temporal resolution, as well as noise suppression and particle...
In sodium-ion batteries (SIBs), the properties of the electrode-electrolyte interphases (EEIs) formed on the electrode surface, dominate the Na+ de-solvation process and Na+ (de)intercalation behavior, thereby influencing the battery performance. Currently, both high-concentration electrolytes and localized high-concentration electrolytes facilitate the formation of anion-derived and...
Polarized neutron diffraction is a powerful tool for studying condensed matter physics and to probe the spin and orbital properties of unpaired electrons. POLI is a polarized neutron single crystal diffractometer built on the hot neutron source at MLZ. Currently three standard setups are implemented on POLI: 1) zero-field spherical neutron polarimetry using CRYOPAD; 2) polarized neutron...
Alginates are naturally occurring polysaccharides extracted from brown algae which are of interest for various biomedical applications$^{[1]}$. In aqueous alginate solutions, divalent cations such as Ca can cause the formation of a polymer network due to the attractive ionic interactions between the cation and the negatively charged carboxyl group on the alginate chains. Grafting...
Silicon oxide (SiOx) is recognized as a promising anode material for high-energy lithium-ion batteries (LIBs) due to its abundant reserves, facile synthesis, and high theoretical capacity. However, the practical use of the SiOx anode is severely hampered due to its poor cycling stability caused by a large volume change upon lithiation/delithiation. The waterborne poly(acrylic acid) (PAA)...
In this study, a novel concept of multipoint anionic bridge (MAB) is proposed and proved, which utilizes anions with different sites to connect with the asymmetric solvation structure (ASS). Compared to usual solvation structures, this study utilizes the multifunctional groups of difluoro(oxalate)borate anion (ODFB-), which can connect with Li+. By tailoring the concentration, the anion serves...