News

28th November 2018: Madrid, Spain – the Institut Laue-Langevin, the world’s flagship neutron facility, is uniting researchers and industry from across Spain to highlight the country’s increasing influence in neutron science, and discuss how this work will help the country to better adapt to the ne…

•    Bacterial infections can be lethal and are becoming increasingly resistant to antibiotics. Six million people dye of blood poisoning (sepsis) every year.  •    The use of neutrons to analyse complex structures on the surface of E.coli could reveal how bacteria interact with their surroundings…

Key binding characteristics of a sugar-binding protein associated with heart disease and breast cancer defined for the first time, guiding future drug developmentResearchers pinpoint hydrogen-bonding interactions in the C-terminal carbohydrate recognition domain of galectin-3 (galectin-3C) for the first time using neutron crystallographyThese detailed observations will inform future drug design f…

A high-precision experiment led by Vienna's Technical University (TU Vienna) has set its sights on pinpointing the so-far hypothetical "symmetron fields" using the PF2 ultra-cold neutron source at the Institut Laue-Langevin (ILL) in France. The existence of symmetrons could provide an explanation …

9th July 2018: Grenoble, France  – the Institut Laue-Langevin (ILL) and European Synchrotron Radiation Facility (ESRF) team up with leading European space companies OHB System AG and MT Aerospace AG to tackle industry challenges. They join forces to advance the characterisation of aerospace materials and make fabrication processes more efficient by probing matter with x-rays and neutrons.Space ex…

10.04.2013Research at Birkbeck, University of London uses world-leading neutron sources at ILL and ISIS to demonstrate ozone attacks on lung surface fluidsA research team from Birkbeck and Royal Holloway Colleges at the University of London, and Uppsala University in Sweden, have helped explain ho…

Neutrons reveal atomic hydrogen diffusion through ‘quantum tunnelling’ on grapheneGraphene is known as the world’s thinnest material due to its 2D structure, where each sheet is only one carbon atom thick, allowing each atom to engage in a chemical reaction from two sides. Graphene flakes can have…

November 2013Fluctuating charge stripes are among the more popular candidates to explain high-temperature superconductivity. So far escaping direct observation  the peculiar ‘hourglass’ magnetic excitation spectrum was taken as evidence for their existence. New Nature Communications paper now find…

Neutron experiments at the ILL contribute to the discovery of a new process of magnetic fragmentation - creating a monopole crystal in a spin ice The IN5 detector. Copyright Bernhard Lehn December 2017To date, the ability of an entity being two mutually exclusive s…

Cuprates show some unusual magnetism above their superconducting temperatures, which may be key to their exotic electronic properties.It is 30 years since scientists discovered a family of metal oxides, the cuprates, that can conduct electricity without resistance up to temperatures much higher (1…

John Womersley, ESS Director General (left) and Helmut Schober, ILL Director (right), signing the ESS-ILL MoU on 20 June 2017, in the presence of Grahame Blair (STFC), Maria Faury (CEA) and Sebastian Schmidt (BMBF). (click to enlarge) Europe leads the world in neu…

Boron steel has crucial applications in the automotive industry; it is attractive due to the reduced automobile weight and increased passenger safety it provides.Understanding the effect spot welding has on residual stress in boron steel is crucial for informing new welding methods that have a les…