High flux diffractometers on reactor neutron sources

Continuous neutron sources such as reactors can deliver a very high time-averaged flux to the sample using a relatively wide band of wavelengths, while still retaining good resolution. For example, the D20 diffractometer at ILL Grenoble, the world's highest flux neutron powder machine, can collect complete patterns at 100 ms intervals, and this has been important for the real time study of explosive SHS reactions. New very large 2D detectors, such as those recently installed on D2B and D 19 at ILL, are up to an order of magnitude larger than previous designs, and will provide unmatched speed of data collection from very small samples, opening up new scientific perspectives for powder and single crystal diffraction. We will discuss future reactor based diffractometers designed for rapid data collection from small samples in special environments. (c) 2006 Elsevier B.V. All rights reserved.