Demonstration of the Technological Capability for Production of Neutron-Focusing Nickel Mirrors
- Electroformed Nickel, Inc.
- Smithsonian Astrophysical Observatory, Cambridge, MA (United States)
- Massachusetts Inst. of Technology (MIT), Cambridge, MA (United States)
Executive Summary Neutron scattering is one of the most useful methods of studying the structure and dynamics of matter. These methods require large installations at national laboratories, such as Oak Ridge National Laboratory (ORNL), National Institute of Standards and Technology (NIST), and other facilities constructed or planned in the US and around the world. These facilities serve a large and diverse community of users in science and engineering, developing new materials for a wide range of applications from new pharmaceuticals to energy to aerospace and defense. Neutron research facilities take a decade to build with a cost of a billion dollars. But they are largely limited by the relatively small flux of available neutrons. Therefore, the efficient use of available neutrons is the highest priority for users and designers of these facilities. This project addresses the need for commercial production of neutron-focusing mirrors, a new type of device, which offers the possibility to improve the throughput of neutron instruments by an order of magnitude or more. The mirrors were first designed and produced by NASA for the needs of x-ray telescopes. Our adoption of this technology leverages a large previous investment by NASA and Smithsonian Astrophysical Observatory to benefit DOE neutron facilities. To produce the mirrors, we fabricated high quality mandrels, designed and fabricated Ni/Ti multilayers, replicated the mirrors with and without the multilayer coating, and tested the resulting mirrors. The tests were carried out at both NIST and Los Alamos neutron research facilities. We also designed the optimal optical configuration of such mirrors for an imaging instrument, a neutron microscope. The microscope consists of condenser mirrors and objective mirrors. We considered three different optical designs for the objective especially and identified a clear winner. We produced a set of mirrors that could be used at NIST, ORNL, or other facilities. Based on our optical design, we concluded that the mirrors produced during this project will work as a condenser of the neutron microscope. The results of the optical designs have been published in two peer-reviewed papers. The results of the tests at Los Alamos showed that the mirrors perform as expected. The multilayer especially was found to be homogeneous and with small enough roughness. The commercial availability of neutron focusing mirrors will bring significant, even transformative, improvements to rate-limited neutron scattering and imaging methods and enable new science. By demonstrating commercial production of the optics, we will catalyze this transition into a different era in neutron research. This project was a stepping-stone effort in this direction, especially since there is no commercial supplier of such optics. In addition to applications at national neutron research facilities, these mirrors are considered for small-angle scattering application at the MIT Reactor, a university-base neutron research facility.
- Research Organization:
- Electroformed Nickel, Inc.; Smithsonian Astrophysical Observatory; Massachusetts Inst. of Technology (MIT), Cambridge, MA (United States)
- Sponsoring Organization:
- USDOE Office of Science (SC)
- Contributing Organization:
- Darell Engelhaupt, Dawn Research, Inc. Ricardo Bruni, SAO Leandra Sethares, SAO Daniel Hussey, NIST Chet Speagle, MSFC Nicholas Thomas, MSFC Muhammad Abir, MIT Sean Fayfar, MIT Marco Amdrade, MIT Dr. Erik Watkins, LANSCE Dr. Sven Vogel, LANSCE Dr. Alex Long, LANSCE
- DOE Contract Number:
- SC0017098
- OSTI ID:
- 1839264
- Type / Phase:
- STTR (Phase II)
- Report Number(s):
- DOE-ENI-0017098
- Country of Publication:
- United States
- Language:
- English
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