Recent upgrades of the neutron reflectometer D17 at ILL

Abstract

1 This article will form part of a virtual special issue on advanced neutron scattering instrumentation, marking the 50th anniversary of the journal.The vertical sample-plane reflectometer D17 at the Institut Laue-Langevin in Grenoble, France, has undergone several major upgrades since its commissioning, which are summarized in this article. The three major improvements are (i) a new focusing guide, increasing the usable flux on the sample by a factor of 2.5; (ii) a new beam polarizer and new spin flippers, allowing for the use of polarized neutrons in time-of-flight mode; and (iii) a new detector with a particularly uniform response under homogeneous exposure, improved stability and state-of-the-art detector electronics. The combination of these factors has paved the road to new possibilities in fast kinetic measurements, magnetism and off-specular scattering. Examples and scientific references for the new capabilities are presented.

Towards generalized data reduction on a chopper-based time-of-flight neutron reflectometer

“…The final improvement of the coherent method involves a point-by-point normalization (and resolution calculation) of the reflected to the direct beams, which will make arbitrary beam profiles accessible. This will become important for the foreseen focusing guide upgrade on D17 [18], where the incoming beam divergence will be increased by a factor of three, potentially accompanied by a non-symmetric beam profile. At the moment the coherent option assumes a symmetric beam profile as every pixel in the reflected beam is normalized to a single integrated number of the direct beam flux.…”

“…The superscripts denote the spin state before and after the interaction with the sample. D17 operates a polarizing S-Bender [18] in reflection to polarize the beam and a single reflection supermirror or a 3 He cell for polarization analysis. Two RF spin flippers [10] are available to invert the spin state of the neutron either before or after the sample.…”

“…A manual of the GUI can be found here: [5]. The present article explains the mathematical body of this data reduction program taking the D17 [6,18] and FIGARO [3] reflectometers as examples.…”

Block Copolymers‐Based Nanoporous Thin Films with Tailored Morphology for Biomolecules Adsorption

“…Experiments of Myoglobin Adsorption—NR : NR measurements were performed on the D17 reflectometer at the Institut Laue–Langevin (Grenoble, France) . The sample cell consisted of a PEEK reservoir containing water solutions put against a silicon supports sandwiched between two aluminum plates used for thermal control.…”

Phase Transitions in a Single Supported Phospholipid Bilayer: Real-Time Determination by Neutron Reflectometry

“…For these reasons, the main transition is usually given as the gel-tofluid transition. The NR measurements reported in the present Letter were performed on the D17 neutron reflectometer [26] (Institut Laue-Langevin, Grenoble) using a divergent beam configuration [27] in a temperature range from 25 to 60°C, i.e., for the temperature intervals in which L β → P β and P β → L α phase transitions were expected. Two angular configurations (θ ¼ 0.8°and θ ¼ 3.0°) were used for the characterization of the sample before (25°C) and after (60°C) the main phase transition, while an intermediate configuration (θ ¼ 2.0°) was used during TTR-NR measurements.…”