Industrial Use of Neutrons

• The characterisation of structural and functional materials such as metals, ceramics, polymers, soft matter, thin films, magnetic properties etc. is needed by developers in the steel and metal industry, in the chemical industry, in the information technology to design e.g. new alloys, polymers, nanocomposites or data memories. The small angle neutron scattering at SANS-1, SANS-2 and DCD, the texture diffractometer TEX-2, the reflectometer with polarised neutrons PNR and NERO are the adequate instruments for these purposes.

• The knowledge of textures and of residual stresses in technical structures and devices due to the manufacturing process or due to use is basic for design engineers to verify the proper functions of their products. The texture diffractometer TEX-2, the diffractometer for the analysis of residual stresses ARES-2 and the Fourier strain scanner FSS are designed to deliver these information by non-destructive investigations, e.g. in welds, in engine blocks or in brake disks.

• There exist tasks of damage analysis, quality assessment or product optimisation for which neutron radiography is the only choice avoiding destructive methods. Neutron radiography is in particular useful to detect hydrogen (water, oil, glue etc.) in cracks or penetrations inside of metallic housings, e.g. in cooling loops, engine blocks, turbine blades etc.. The neutron radiography facility GENRA-3 is offered for these kind of industrial applications.

• The in-core irradiation ICI service is in particular provided for industry, authorities, institutions but also for research. Samples are irradiated with defined fluxes short and long term directly in the core or using a pneumatic dispatch system. Typical irradiation tasks are e.g. the activation of cobalt for measurement instruments, the generation of radiation sources, the atomic transposition in the structure of silica for the semiconductor industry as well as the tracer analysis and the age detection. Additional the irradiation facility GBET is available for the irradiation with cold neutrons which originally was designed for studies of the boron capture therapy in tumour cells.

The source of the GeNF neutrons is the FRG-1 (Forschungsreaktor Geesthacht) with an unperturbed neutron flux of 1.4 x 10¹⁴ n cm^-2 s^-1 . The good availability of the FRG-1 leads to a mean operation time of 250 days per year. Annually two interrupts are planned for repetitive tests, maintenance and repair.
Orders from industry and others will be processed by experienced personnel. The costs depend on the necessary expenditure.