(1) Photonics Science Limited, Robertsbridge, East Sussex, TN32 3LA, United Kingdom.
Instrument description
CYCLOPS is composed of : an octogonal detector, essentially eight copies of the OrientExpress detector, a sample table equipped with an ω rotation and X,Y and Z translations. It is located at the end of the thermal neutron guide H24.
The instrument control software MAD and DTI, running under Linux, controls the motors, the sample environment and interfaces to the data acquisition program which runs on an adjacent PC under Windows.
The detector is based upon eight high performance thermoelectrically cooled image intensified CCD cameras. These cameras view an octagonal array of large area neutron scintillators via fast close-focus f0.95 lenses inside a light-tight enclosure. The neutrons pass through this enclosure along a light-tight pipe through the centre of two opposing scintillators. A pair of cameras view each facet of the octagonal scintillator array which ensures that the beam pipes do not obscure any part of the scintillators from the cameras’ view.
Within the cameras, coupling between the intensifier and CCD is via a tapered fibre-optic, bonded directly onto the CCD, to give maximum transmission and high sensitivity. The neutron scintillator is of AST type ND blue, based upon Li6 with added ZnS:Ag to provide high neutron capture efficiency and low γ-ray efficiency, to provide good discrimination. The scintillator thickness is 0.21mm.
The total active scintillator area of (4 x) 400 x 166 mm2 is rendered as a single image in 8, 12 or 16-bit TIFF format of 3840x2400 pixels. Each pixel is 172 μm on edge. The total readout time is ~1 sec. The free diameter of 380 mm around the sample, three-times larger than that of VIVALDI, will permit a wider range of sample environment, including large pressure cells and cryomagnets.
Ref.: B. Ouladdiaf et al., "CYCLOPS- a reciprocal space explorer based on CCD detectors", in preparation, 2010.
