Imagine all the tiny magnets in the electric motors of a new car, the lighter, longer-lasting batteries that power a mobile phone or computer, the selective catalysts used to create new fuels and clean up the environment. Imagine machines made from new kinds of fibres, with motors made from novel ceramics – both lighter and tougher than the metals they replace. Imagine storing greenhouse gases at the bottom of the ocean, or finding vast reserves of energy in this ‘inner space’. But who could imagine, a few years ago, new superconducting materials that could conduct electricity without loss, and be used in more powerful magnetic scanners to map the human body in the finest detail? Who can imagine the future without working on the materials that will make it possible?

The properties of these materials are largely determined by their structure – structure on the atomic scale, or nano-structure. The distance between atoms is only about 0.1 of a nanometre (nm or one-billionth of a metre) much smaller than the wavelength of light (100 to 200 nm), so clearly we cannot use light. But neutrons, along with electrons and X-rays, can provide a new kind of ‘microscope’.

Neutrons are subatomic particles that act like waves – like X-rays, and electrons. Since the wavelength of ‘thermal’ neutrons is similar to the distance between atoms, they have the potential for providing images of structure on an atomic scale.

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