Institut Laue-Langevin

With its international funding and expertise the Institut Laue-Langevin (ILL) offers scientists and industry the world's leading facility in neutron science and technology. From its Grenoble site in the south-east of France the Institute operates the most intense neutron source on Earth.

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Movies and Pictures

CYCLOPS

A fast neutron Laue-diffractometer

CYCLOPS (CYlindrical Ccd Laue Octagonal Photo Scintillator) is a new ILL instrument with unique characteristics. It was installed at the end of the thermal neutron guide H24 by june 2009. Its main part is an octogonal detector made of 16 high performance thermoelectrically cooled image intensified CCD cameras. The present total active scintillator area is of (4 x) 400 x 166 mm2, each pixel is 172 μm on edge. The total readout time is ~1 sec.

This movie was recorded during the very first tests. It shows that exposures as short as of a few seconds are enough to get excellent Laue patterns from a sample of a few mm3. For example, the patterns shown in the movie clearly demonstrate that the crystal is twinned, all Bragg spots being splitted. In other words a few seconds were enough to assess the quality of the sample but this one amongst the many potential applications of neutron Laue diffraction combined with fast data acquisition rate.

References:

  1. "CYCLOPS, A proposed high flux CCD neutron diffractometer", A.W.Hewat, B.Ouladdiaf, G.J.McIntyre, M-H.Lemee-Cailleau, D.Brau, S.York, <http://www.ill.fr/dif/2000>
  2. "High flux diffractometers on reactor neutron sources", Alan W. Hewat (2006) Physica B: Condensed Matter, 385-386, 979-984.


The movie:

Click here to download the 800x500 MEPG-4 file (size: 2.8 Mb, duration: 13.4s)

©2009, Institut Laue-Langevin, Grenoble, France.

Last update: A.Filhol, 18 June 2009.