Page 244 - Neutrons for Sciences and Society

Neutrons for Science
Neutrons for society
Studies at the ILL have provided invaluable information on the eminently practical subject of water purification. For hundreds of years the seeds of the Moringa oleifera tree have been used by African villagers to purify their water supply. A combination of small angle neutron scattering, neutron reflectivity and instrumentation at the PSB has been used133 to understand the structure and properties of the Moringa protein, leading to a rational optimisation of the purification technique.
Neutrons and the understanding of matter
Even traditional fields of neutron science such as studies of vibrations in rather simple solids have evolved following
the developments in neutron instrumentation at the ILL. The properties of complex materials of interest in our modern life are under investigation, in particular the transport of heat or electricity.
• Experiments at the ILL have demonstrated that models for heat conductivity in materials cannot reproduce observed properties; the dynamic properties which are crucial for thermal processes can be inferred from neutron experiments134.
• Exotic electronic phenomena are under investigation in a class of superconductors135. These are materials that could transport electricity with no resistance at almost practical
133 Hellsing M.S. et al., Colloids Surf. A, 460, 460-467 (2014), DOI: 10.1016/j.colsurfa.2013.11.038; Kwaambwa H.M. et al., J. Colloid Interf. Sci., 448, 339-346 (2015), DOI: 10.1016/j.jcis.2015.02.033
134 Lory P.-F. et al., Nat. Commun., 8: 491 (2017), DOI: 10.1038/s41467-017-00584-7
135 Limura S. et al., PNAS May 30, 114, E4354-E4359 (2017), DOI: 10.1073/pnas.1703295114; Mangin-Thro L.
et al.. Nat. Commun. 6, 7705 (2015), DOI: 10.1038/ncomms8705 235