Associate Professor and Pietro F. Pasqua Fellow Maik Lang, along with fellow physicists and nuclear engineers Eric O’Quinn, Jörg Neuefeind, and Christina Trautmann, have published an overview article of their research on neutron total scattering in Nuclear Physics News, which is a journal of the Nuclear Physics European Collaboration Committee.
The article, entitled “Characterization of Radiation Effects and Ion Tracks with Spallation Neutron Probes,” introduces the new concept of using neutron probes from the Spallation Neutron Source at Oak Ridge National Laboratory to investigate radiation damage in a wide range of nuclear materials, which are subject to intense irradiation.
There are many unanswered questions regarding how damage forms and accumulates at the atomic scale. Based on a few examples, the article highlights how neutron total scattering experiments provide new insight into damage formation by overcoming many deficits of conventional characterization techniques.
This research approach is only possible by combining ion-beam experiments at one of the world’s largest accelerator facilities with the most intense spallation neutron source.