A Beginner’s Guide to Neutron Reactor and Spallation Sources
摘要
Neutrons used in crystallography research are generated in two types of sources: nuclear reactors and spallation neutron sources. While reactors produce neutrons continuously, spallation sources produce pulses of neutrons due to the pulsed nature of the particle accelerators used. The generated neutrons have energies of mega electron volt (MeV) and thus have wavelengths that would be extremely short for our diffraction purpose. The emitted neutrons are therefore passed through materials known as“moderators” to reduce the neutron energies to the milli electron volt (meV) range. According to the type of moderator theneutron beams are called “cold” having wavelengths of ~5Å or “thermal” or “hot” neutrons having wavelengths of ~1Å.