On Wednesday, November 1, 2023, a group of undergraduate students from the Materials Science & Engineering department at the University of Tennessee toured the two neutron research facilities at Oak Ridge National Laboratory: HFIR High Flux Isotope Reactor and the SNS Spallation Neutron Source. The trip was organized by the local student Chapter of Material Advantage at UTK.
As part of the tour, the students learned how neutron scattering provides information about the positions, motions, and magnetic properties of materials.
HFIR’s steady-state neutron beam is the strongest reactor-based neutron source in the United States. Recent discoveries made possible by neutrons at HFIR are helping to unravel the secrets of materials and energy. This new knowledge also leads to improvements in every day products like solar cells, hard drives, drugs, and bio-fuels.
SNS produces neutrons with a particle accelerator that delivers microsecond proton pulses to a steel target filled with liquid mercury through a process called spallation. Those neutrons are then directed toward state-of-the-art instruments that provide a variety of capabilities to researchers across a broad range of disciplines, such as physics, chemistry, biology, and materials science. The students visited the POWGEN beamline, which is used to determine the atomic structure of crystalline materials in powder form.
A special thanks to the visit host Dr. Jeff Bunn (PhD, UTK Civil Engineering, 2014), the SNS tour guide Dr. Cheng Li and the HFIR tour guide Dr. Matthias Frontzek.
