Research with Neutrons

The construction and operation of large scale facilities is an important task of the Federal Research Centres in Germany. These facilities are made available to scientists from universities, other research institutions and industry. Foreign research groups have equal opportunities for access to these large scale facilities.

Scientific quality and relevance of the submitted projects are the only criteria considered in allocating beam time at the large scale facilities.

Within this context, GKSS as a National Research Centre operates its research reactor FRG-1 as a neutron source to supply a variety of modern instruments with thermal and cold neutrons. A further flux increase in the year 2000 to 1,4 x 10¹⁴ cm^-2 s^-1 has closed the gap to other facilities despite the lower thermal power of the FRG-1.

The instrumentation at the FRG-1 is made available to outside users by the Geesthacht neutron facility (GeNF) offering investigations of the structure, properties and function of anorganic and organic materials and parts, such as
• magnetic and nonmagnetic metals and alloys
• ceramics
• organic and anorganic layered systems
• geological samples
• membranes
• polymers
• biological molecules and their functional units
• colloidal and micellar solutions.

The information gained is linked to the specific properties of the neutron and is in general not obtainable otherwise. It includes e.g. the atomic and magnetic structure of the samples, density and size distribution of pores, precipitates, and cracks, roughness and correlation of internal interfaces, residual stresses and textures of engineering parts and components, structure and function of biological macromolecules, as well as the chemical composition of certain samples with high accuracy. The investigations are non-destructive.