Introduction to the Neutron Scattering Facilities at Oak Ridge National Laboratory

Oak Ridge National Laboratory has two neutron sources, the Spallation Neutron Source (SNS) and High Flux Isotope Reactor (HFIR), that are available to any researcher to perform high impact science via a proposal-based system. Neutron scattering is a complimentary technique to other characterization systems and provides details about the structure and motion of atoms that cannot be easily obtained through other methods. Neutrons can be used for diffraction, spectroscopy, reflectometry, and imaging experiments to help better understand the structure or dynamics in a system. The benefit of neutrons are 1) they are senstive to light elements such as hydrogen and oxygen so they can be used to determine a more accurate crystal structure 2) they are nondestructive and highly penetrating which makes is possible to study polymers, proteins and biological materials without destroying them and mechanical components can be probed deep into the material, 3) neutrons have a magentic moment which interacts with the magnetic moment in a sample, providing information that cannot be easily obtained with any other technique, and 4) thermal neutrons closely match the energies of atoms in motion so they can be used to track molecular vibrations and movements of atoms over time. This talk will discuss how neutrons can help solve a wide variety of challenging research problems, the techniques that are available at HFIR and SNS, and how these facilities can be accessed