Yttrium oxyhydride (YHxOy) is a promising mixed-anion semiconductor in view of its photochromic properties, offering prospects for applications in smart windows. The origin of its pronounced color-neutral photodarkening upon UV illumination and the subsequent process of bleaching back to the transparent state is topic of our investigations. We present in-situ illumination studies based on...
Pulses and beans are important protein sources in the current protein transition, but much of the behavior of pulse proteins in food systems is still unknown. In particular in interface-dominated materials (emulsions, foams, etc), the nanoscopic behaviour of a protein – how they fold, stretch, and lock into place – governs whether a protein assembly ends up as a gel, a glass, or something in...
Inhomogeneity is a defining feature of real-world materials - whether in composition, phase, strain, or defect distribution - and plays a central role in determining their mechanical and functional behavior. Neutron imaging, with its unique ability to penetrate dense structural materials, has evolved into a powerful, non-destructive tool for visualizing such internal complexity across...
The importance of hydrogen embrittlement (HE) will increase with the energy transition, as hydrogen (H) is a promising fuel for CO₂-free power generation. In aviation, the replacement of kerosene by H requires turbine materials resistant to HE. Single-crystal (SX) superalloys are the material of choice for the hottest turbine sections, where the lattice parameter misfit between y and y' is a...
Alloy 718, a widely used Ni-based superalloy, is susceptible to hydrogen embrittlement. The γ' and γ'' precipitates and the δ phase significantly contribute to this embrittlement. To determine if other superalloys with different grain boundary pinning phases exhibit similar behavior, we investigated two γ' strengthened CoNiCr-based superalloys containing B2-structured β or D85-structured µ...
Time-resolved in situ investigations are very useful for unveiling basic steps of chemical reactions. They are of fundamental importance for many technologically relevant processes, e. g. hydrogen storage, electrochemical energy storage or ore smelting, and allow for elucidation of reaction pathways and the identification of intermediates thus enabling better reaction control [1-4]....
Single chain nano particles (SCNPs) are model system to decipher intrinsically disordered proteins. Here, we have probed the effect of salt/polymer concentration, cross link density, and charge density. Poly-l-lysine-SCNPs (PLL-SCNPs) prepared by tuning intramolecular crosslinking, solvent condition and ionic strength. Structural result show that radius of gyration of PLL-SCNP lowers by...
Many emergent properties of great interest occur near a quantum critical point were a second-order transition is suppressed to zero temperature. Hence, a significant focus of current condensed matter is the study of susceptibilities and order parameters in materials that are influenced by quantum fluctuations. Structural phase transitions close to zero temperature provide ideal platforms for...
In cubic chiral magnets, the efficient coupling of magnetic skyrmion lattices to spin currents and magnetic fields permits their dynamical manipulation. When placed in a magnetic field with a slowly oscillating direction, the skyrmion lattice can be depinned, realizing a non-equilibrium state with vanishing depinning currents. With the combination of oscillating magnetic fields and applied...
Neutron crystallography is a powerful method to determine the positions of hydrogen atoms in macromolecular structures. However, it is sometimes hard to judge what would constitute a chemically reasonable model, and the geometry of H atoms depends more on the surroundings (for example the formation of hydrogen bonds) than heavy atoms, so that the empirical geometry information for the hydrogen...
Lipid nanoparticles (LNPs) are the delivery technology in the mRNA SARS-CoV-2 vaccines, and they are now being screened to deliver a broad variety of biological drugs. Despite their success, rational design of lipid based nanocarriers for precision medicine applications is complex. One of the key barriers is our current limited ability to relate nanoparticle structure and chemical composition...
The decay of the free neutron offers many opportunities to determine fundamental parameters in the Standard Model of particle physics, and also plays an important role in cosmology. The lifetime of the neutron is of particular importance, especially since it should be easy to measure in principle.
Even though we discovered the neutron almost a hundred years ago, experimental physicists face...
We present a resonant spectroscopy technique devoted to the study of gravitation and the related cosmological problems of Dark Matter and Dark Energy. The object is a quantum mechanical wavepacket of an ultra-cold neutron, and the new method extends the techniques of Purcel, Rabi and Ramsey to neutron quantum states in the gravity potential of the Earth. The technique is named Gravity...
In dilute aqueous solution, diblock copolymers with a hydrophobic and a thermo-responsive block self-assemble into core-shell micelles. Here, we present the self-assembly behavior of the diblock copolymer PMMA-b-PNIPAM consisting of a short hydrophobic poly(methyl methacrylate) and a long thermoresponsive poly(N-isopropylacrylamide) block. Synchrotron small-angle X-ray scattering reveals...
PANDA is the cold three-axis spectrometer 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 double focusing PG-002 monochromator, a versatile sample table capable of supporting cryomagnets, dilution inserts (50 mK) and a new...
Polysaccharides are crucial structural polymers of life and display a diverse set of conformations, although the origins of these conformations are not fully understood. In this study, a high molecular weight pectin polysaccharide was investigated in binary water–glycerol mixtures using a complementary combination of molecular dynamics simulations, rheology, calorimetry, and neutron...
Small-angle neutron scattering (SANS) is one of the most important techniques for microstructure determination, which is used in a wide range of scientific disciplines such as materials science, physics, chemistry, and biology. Conventional SAS can probe microstructural (density and composition) inhomogeneities in the bulk and on a mesoscopic length scale between a few and a few hundred...
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...
Thermogels are of great interest in biomedical applications such as tissue engineering or drug delivery. For applications, the possibility to design specific thermogels with predetermined mechanical properties and tunable gel points is crucial. Tetrablock terpolymers offer numerous possibilities to tune the gel point and the gel properties for the desired purpose [1].
To determine the...
In the last decades alternative production methods for alloys have become the focus of science and industry. One of these production methods is using laser powder bed fusion (LPBF), in which alloys can be printed in complex, delicate and hollow shapes and geometries, which is difficult for the conventional casting and forging approach. The 3D printable alloys are used in the area of...
Lattice relaxation, i.e. small lattice symmetry lowering, could lead to unresolved peak splitting in powder diffraction, which results in anisotropic, i.e. $hkl$-dependent, peak broadening. Recently Gregorkiewitz & Boschetti [1] derived formulas for $1/d_{hkl}^2$ (with $d_{hkl}$ being an interplanar distance) for each split peak component in the six minimal relaxation schemes. Anisotropic peak...
Feasible KWS-1 modes and experiments will be presented for the period of reactor operation without the cold source.
The structural color change of cephalopods is primarily driven by the self-assembly of reflectin proteins, which modulates the refractive index of the Bragg reflection layer, thereby altering the propagation of light. Additionally, when induced by small molecules like imidazole, reflectin will undergo higher-order assembly, forming a hexagonal lamellar structure. This work employs small-angle...
The coherent scattering length $ b_c $ is a fundamental property for many neutron techniques, but have to be determined for each nuclide individually. Although this has carefully been done over decades and results were summarized in established standard tables, some $ b_c $ values have large experimental uncertainties, including possible systematic errors, or have not been determined...
Magnetic nanoparticles (MNPs) offer a promising avenue for magnetic hyperthermia, a cancer therapy where MNPs are introduced into tumors and then heated with an external magnetic field to destroy cancer cells. For this clinical application to be safe and effective, it's critical to optimize the magnetic field parameters and the heating power. Since safety concerns limit the maximum applied...
A selene type, 20 m long instrument has been proposed on the 96 Hz moderator which could serve as a future macromolecular diffractometer for single crystals (e. g. protein crystals). A macromolecular diffractometer at the 24 Hz TMR station with a conventional neutron guide of 80 m length using a cold moderator is planned to be designed and simulated. A traditional elliptical neutron guide is...
We present the hot neutron two-axis diffractometer POLI, which uses spin-polarized neutrons for magnetic studies in particular. We give an overview on the capabilities as well as recent upgrades of the instrument.
PLEPS measures the positron annihilation lifetime of atomisticdefects in various materials with a pulsed monochromatic positron-beam of variable energy.PLEPS is an ideal tool for:
a) defect-identification and defect depth-profiling in thin-layered structures of semiconductors and insulators,
b) characterization of radiation-damage in materials for fusion and fission, and
c)direct...
The Neutron Spin Echo Spectrometer (J-NSE) 'PHOENIX' enables the study of slow dynamic processes such as the fluctuations of biological membranes and the internal domain motions of proteins. With its superconducting main precession coils and optimised field shape, it is one of the most advanced NSE instruments available. Recent developments to the instrument include the installation of a...
Background from sample cryostat on three-axis spectrometer: can it be reduced?
A.Ivanov, A.Piovano
Institut Laue-Langevin, Grenoble, France
Background from sample environment may be a relatively important issue in the measurements with small and low scattering samples on a three-axis spectrometer. It can be present in the form of sharp peaks as a function of nominal energy transfer E...
Over several decades of research in neutron experiments and methods, the Jülich Centre for Neutron Science (JCNS) has accumulated extensive knowledge, including scientific papers, manuals, Wikipedia-style articles, in-house developed software, and electronic lab notebooks. However, effectively accessing and utilizing these resources remains challenging. At the same time, high-fidelity...
Analysis of the spectra obtained with Prompt Gamma Activation Analysis (PGAA) is a well-developed method with relatively straightforward data treatment. However, due to the large number of gamma rays emitted after neutron capture, and the possible interference of the gamma rays from different elements, in the target material, this process can be time consuming. This is also additionally...
The high-intensity reflectometer MARIA of JCNS is installed in the neutron guide hall of the FRM II reactor in Garching and is using a velocity selector as a primary wavelength filter with a resolution of 10%. The full cross section of the beam is optionally polarized by a double-reflecting super mirror and in the vertical direction the elliptically focusing neutron guide increases the flux at...
PEDOT:PSS is a water-dispersable and electrically conductive polymer blend that is increasingly applied as organic electronics in numerous fields such as batteries, super-capacitors, and solar cells. While many studies focus on performance optimization, long-term degradation issues because of humid environments are rarely discussed. PEDOT:PSS absorbs significant amounts of water (~50 wt%),...
Hydrogen storage in light hydride systems for mobile applications is a widely discussed but a highly controversial topic because of explosive mixtures of hydrogen with oxygen. This danger, however, is eliminated, if hydrogen is stored in complex hydrides, releasing hydrogen only under significant heat impact.
The main issue for complex hydride mixtures is the kinetics of the reversible...
The PERC facility is 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 weak interaction properties by one order of magnitude and to search for new physics via new effective couplings.
PERC's central component is a 12 m long...
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...
The practical application of lithium metal batteries (LMBs) is primarily challenged by the unstable interface between the lithium metal anode (LMA) and conventional electrolytes, leading to dendritic lithium growth and low Coulombic efficiency. While localized high-concentration electrolytes (LHCEs) mitigate these issues by modulating solvation structures, their cluster configurations and...
Neutron analytical methods are indispensable tools for non-destructive elemental analysis of materials or items of various origins (geological, environmental, biological, cultural, archeological and industrial). Fast neutron inelastic scattering brings analytical capabilities to a new level, allowing to analyze thick and dense samples thanks to higher incident energy of neutrons via...
Presenting instrument HEiDi, a hot neutron single crystal diffractometer
Electron microscopy (EM) is a powerful imaging technique that use an electron beam to illuminate a sample, making it particularly valuable in the study of soft matter.
Transmission electron microscopy (TEM) allows real-space investigations to obtain knowledge about particle shape, size, size distribution, self-assembly, and aggregation. Scanning electron microscopy (SEM) with environmental...
Positron annihilation lifetime spectroscopy (PALS) is a powerful tool in a
wide range of materials science. To investigate inhomogeneous defect
distributions, e.g. close to fatigue cracks or in a dispersive alloy, with
PALS a pulsed positron beam with a diameter in the range of 1 µm and a
time resolution in the order of 200 ps is needed.
POWTEX is a TOF neutron powder diffractometer built by RWTH Aachen University and Forschungszentrum Jülich, with contributions from Göttingen University. Funded by the BMFTR (Projects 05K22PA2 and 05K23PAA), it aims to enable rapid measurements, in-situ chemical experiments and parametric studies. The wide angular coverage significantly reduces the need for sample tilting for texture...
Lipid sponge phase nanoparticles (L₃NPs) are emerging as versatile carriers for biomolecular delivery due to their curved flexible bilayer structures and interconnected aqueous channels. These bicontinuous nanostructures enable efficient encapsulation of large, sensitive biomolecules, including proteins. However, scalable production
methods and mechanistic insights into their membrane...
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 determination of protonation states of amino acid side chains in the active center, the orientation of individual water molecules essential for the catalytic mechanism and the...
Presenting instrument PUMA, thermal-neutron three-axes spectrometer.
Li metal-based batteries are foreseen as future energy storage devices. However, a major hindrance to their industrial application is the uneven Li deposition on the anode that results in dendritic growth and poor columbic efficiency (CE).
Our previous work had revealed that batteries with a mechanically rigid M1I0 polymer coating on anode show a comparatively lower CE than those with a a...
Data Evaluation Group (DEVA) offers support for processing and evaluation of experimental data collected at selected neutron and x-ray instruments of the MLZ. Our service is particularly focused to support infrequent or new users to facilitate data analysis to obtain meaningful results ready for publication in short time. This includes assistance in data reduction, data analysis steps with use...
KOMPASS, a polarised triple-axis spectrometer (TAS), is one of the most recently built instruments at the FRM II. It is designed exclusively for polarised neutrons, benefiting from its uniquely designed polarising guide setup, which consists of static and exchangeable sections. The static part of the guide system hosts a series of three polarising V-cavities, yielding a highly polarised beam....
KWS-3 is a very small angle neutron scattering diffractometer operated by JCNS at Heinz Maier-Leibnitz Zentrum (MLZ) in Garching, Germany. The principle of this instrument is one-to-one imaging of an entrance aperture onto a 2D position sensitive detector by neutron reflection from a double-focusing toroidal mirror. In current state, KWS-3 is covering Q-range between 3·10-5 and 2·10-2 Å-1 and...
Presenting thin film sample preparation with MBE (Molecular Beam Epitaxy) for neutron reflectometry and thin film characterization techniques in the thin film lab.
KWS-2 is a pinhole SANS diffractometer optimized for the investigation of complex morphologies and rapid structural changes in soft-matter and biophysical systems. The instrument enables the exploration of a broad Q range between 1.0x10$^-$$^4$ and 2.0 Å$^-$$^1$ offering high neutron intensities and adjustable experimental resolution in continuous or TOF mode based on the instrument's...
Neutron scattering experiments provide valuable insights into the nanoscopic properties of matter. In this contribution we study water absorbed to cellulose leading to the conclusion that water absorbed to cellulse is adherend with its hydrogen bonds fixed to the cellulose, indicating that steric effects play only a minor role.
The time- and lenghtscales probed by neutron scattering...
RIANA is a Horizon Europe project offering free, transnational access to 69 leading research facilities across 22 countries. Through cutting-edge techniques, including electron microscopy, synchrotron radiation, and nanofabrication, RIANA supports breakthrough research in nanoscience and technology. A unique feature is its dedicated network of Junior Scientists, who provide expert, one-on-one...
Presenting the capabilities of the thermal/cold neutron imaging instrument ANTARES
The RESEDA(REsonance Spin Echo for Diverse Applications) instrument is a spectrometer that can use the MIEZE(Modulated IntEnsity with Zero Effort) method, a variant of neutron spin echo(NSE) that uses radio frequency(RF) spin flippers instead of static magnetic fields and that can measure samples that depolarize the beam.
As a next step for improving the experimental setup it was proposed...
The instrument state-of-the-art along with the startup activities will be presented.
Presenting TOPAS, a thermal neutron time-of-flight spectrometer with polarization analysis.
Neutron activation analysis (NAA) is a highly sensitive method of chemical analysis with neutrons. The FRM II provides flux values of up to 10^14 /cm^2s in selected irradiation positions near the reactor core. The high degree of thermalization is optimal for analysis, as corrections due to interfering reactions are usually negligible. The irradiated samples can be transported via a rabbit...
Presenting instrument DNS, a polarised diffuse neutron scattering instrument with time-of-flight inelastic scattering option
This PhD project will investigate the mechanical behaviour of steel and aluminium alloys at cryogenic temperatures through experiments performed using neutron diffractometry with the SALSA strain diffractometer at the Institut Laue-Langevin (ILL), Grenoble. The aim is to correlate macroscopic stress–strain behaviour with lattice-scale strain evolution, providing new insights into deformation...
Copper is widely used as a current collector in lithium metal batteries due to its electrical conductivity and mechanical stability. However, its inherently low lithiophilicity often results in uneven lithium plating and stripping, which fosters dendrite growth and negatively impacts cell safety, cycle life, and overall performance. To mitigate these issues, surface modifications such as...
The poster will describe the instrument SAPHiR and give scientific examples.
In this poster you will have the opportunity to see the tasks we have carried out for the MLZ user operation relaunch.
Presenting instrument TOFTOF, a cold neutron time-of-flight spectromenter
The customized SAXS/WAXS instrument began user operations in April 2023. As the latest addition to our small-angle scattering instrument family, which uses X-rays as the primary probe, the new instrument is equipped with a high-flux Metal-Jet source and a movable Eiger2R 4M SAXS detector. It also features a 4-axis motorized WAXS detector and a Bonse-Hart USAXS system, enabling a broad...
Alginates are naturally occurring polysaccharides found in brown algae. Featuring non-toxicity and highly controllable ionic gelation by divalent metals, such as Ca2+, alginates have seen extensive use in biomedicine, such as wound dressings and in 3D bioprinting.
Here, we investigate an alginate-based graft copolymer, namely Alginate-g-P(NIPAM94-co-NtBAM6), where a random copolymer of...
Composite solid polymer electrolytes (CSPEs) have emerged as promising candidates for next-generation all-solid-state lithium batteries (ASSLBs). However, the limited ionic conductivity and poor interphase stability have seriously hindered their practical application. Herein, the anion-trapping layered double hydroxide (LDH) was introduced to simultaneously enhance ionic conductivity and...
Silicon-carbon (Si/C) composite anodes are promising candidates for high-energy-density lithium-ion batteries due to the high theoretical capacity of silicon. However, their practical application is hindered by severe volume expansion and unstable solid electrolyte interphase (SEI) formation during cycling. Fluoroethylene carbonate (FEC) is commonly used to improve interfacial stability, but...
SPHERES (SPectrometer for High Energy RESolution) is a third-generation backscattering spectrometer with focusing optics and a phase-space-transform chopper. It combines the high energy resolution with a very good signal-to-noise ratio. It is a versatile spectrometer for investigating atomic and molecular dynamics on a μeV scale. Typical applications include for example hyperfine splitting or...
Block copolymer micelles have been widely studied due to their flexible structure adaptation and their ability to load drugs. Recently, micelles with a positively charged shell have been proposed to complex DNA, enabling efficient gene therapy. To achieve highly tunable morphologies and multi-biological functions, self-assembled micelles from the diblock copolymers PDMAEMA-b-PLMA and the...
