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...
