Dynamically polarized hydrogenous materials for neutron scattering

Neutron scattering from dynamically polarized protons provides an effective way to study the structure of hydrogenous materials. Hydrogen makes up about half of all the atoms in biological molecules. Its content in many other soft condensed matters is very high as well. Neutron's interaction with hydrogen depends strongly on their spin states. Polarized neutron scattering from polarized hydrogens can both increase the coherent scattering signal and reduce the incoherent background. Many of its past applications were focused on solution scatterings from large biological complexes such as the ribosome. Those studies were recently confirmed by the crystal structures of the ribosome. A promising future application for polarized neutron scattering from dynamically polarized hydrogens is neutron protein crystallography. Currently, neutron protein crystallography is severely flux limited, even at the world's most powerful neutron sources. It can benefit greatly from the increased diffraction signal and reduced incoherent background enabled by polarized neutron diffraction. (C) 2004 Elsevier B.V. All rights reserved.