News

The ILL recently welcomed the first 'novice users' as part of the exchange programme. These are the video portraits of three scientists, in various stage of their careers, discovering the ILL for the first time.

The Joint Evaluated Fission and Fusion (JEFF) Library combines and makes available the experimental and theoretical knowledge on nuclear data. Release JEFF-4.0 is a significant achievement for the community with major ILL contributions.

Solid-state battery research has just been turbocharged by the development of the first sample cell that unlocks the unique real-time insights of operando neutron diffraction at the ILL. This major advancement is the result of a collaborative effort between the ILL and LEPMI laboratory in Grenoble within the framework of the OpInSolid project funded by the French National Research Agency (ANR).

In everyday life, we typically encounter water in one of three familiar states – solid, liquid or gas. But there are in fact many more phases, some of which – predicted to exist at high temperature and pressure – are so strange they’re referred to as exotic. State-of-the-art neutron spectrometers and sample environment infrastructures at the Institut Laue-Langevin (ILL) have enabled the first experimental observation of one of these exotic phases – plastic ice VII.

Applying pressure to metal compounds with electronic and magnetic properties of technological interest provides a uniquely powerful way of tuning those properties so as to understand them better. Through record-breaking high-pressure measurements, we have been able to track the fascinating evolution of conductivity and magnetism in an interesting layered compound as the layers of atoms are pushed…

Courtesy of STFC,RAL,ISIS

The weakly coupled planes of Fe ions in the material are pushed closer together under extreme pressure. This results in metallisation but not the loss of all magnetic order as previous measurements have suggested. The lower pressure order is however replaced by a new short-range version. …

The publication made the front cover of Nature Physics in May 2020.

H20, the key molecule of life, is closely studied across the world. Yet, there are many mysteries we are still to uncover. One of these mysteries is ice.

Newly discovered multiferroic nano-clusters might help to enable the next generation of processor and memory devices 24.06.2016A team of scientists from England, Germany and France recently discovered novel so-called multiferroic clusters. Results were published as a featured article in the journa…

Photo ILL / Max Alexander Iron-based superconductors contain layers of iron and a pnictogen – such as arsenic or phosphorus – or a chalcogen, like oxygen or selenium. Previously dismissed eas weak candidates for superconductivity, iron-based superconductors took th…

10.12.2014The discovery of a new form of ice could lead to an improved understanding of our planet’s geology, potentially helping to unlock new solutions in the production, transportation and storage of energy. Ice XVI, the least dense of all known forms of ice, has a highly symmetric cage-like st…