Neutrons and synchrotron radiation are complementary tools; therefore, these two methods are usually associated in thinking. The applications of neutrons and synchrotron radiation are quite similar; however, the most focus in today’s applications of neutron methods are diffraction and scattering. Furthermore, due to the special properties, neutrons can make up some deficiencies of synchrotron radiation, especially the applications on biological and magnetic samples. The details please visit the website of Taiwan neutron association.
What's neutron?
Neutron, which is central particle, is one of the particles to form the nucleus. Due to the neutrons mainly interact with the nuclei of a matter; therefore, the stronger transmission ability and different scattering cross section changes compared to synchrotron radiation are presented. The scattering cross section shows a linear change as the atomic numbers of the materials increase when synchrotron radiation interacts with matters, but an irregular change of neutrons. Therefore, the discriminating ability of neutrons to light elements、near elements or isotopes is much better than synchrotron radiation. Furthermore, the neutrons also have spins so that neutrons are most useful for magnetic materials.
Neutrons implicated with industrial applications
Taiwan government had ever signed a collaborator agreement with Australia, and also constructed a neutron beamline in ANSTO. The following table lists several neutron methods in ANSTO for industrial applications in common use.