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2
General Assessment of the NIST Center for Neutron Research
As it has for more than a decade, the NIST Center for Neutron Research is fulfilling its
mission extremely well―that mission is to ensure the availability of neutron measurement
capabilities in order to meet the needs of U.S. researchers from industry, academia, and
government agencies. For years, including the long period of “neutron drought” in the United
States brought about by the closing of the High Flux Beam Reactor (HFBR), the prolonged
shutdown of the High Flux Isotope Reactor (HFIR), and earlier problems with the Lujan Facility
at the Los Alamos National Laboratory, the NCNR has helped maintain the strength and
competitiveness of neutron scattering research in this country. It has done so through a
combination of good management, a culture of excellence, new instrumentation, and continuing
improvements to the beam lines.
The NCNR’s reactor has continued to perform very reliably, with 253 days of availability
out of a possible 255 days in the past year. By almost all of the Office of Science and
Technology Policy’s performance metrics (e.g., reliability of operation, number of operational
days per year, number of instruments, number of users, number of publications, and publications
in high-impact journals), the NCNR continues to be the second most scientifically productive
neutron facility in the world (comparable to ISIS in England), after the Institut Laue-Langevin
(ILL) in France. (The ILL has more than twice as many instruments as the NCNR and
consequently has an accepted proposal rate approximately twice that of the NCNR). This is
likely to continue at least until the Spallation Neutron Source (SNS) and the Japan Proton
Accelerator Research Complex gain full momentum. Even then, with planned upgrades and
improvements the NCNR will continue to be a competitive facility for the foreseeable future.
The new suite of instruments planned for the expansion includes enhancements to the
neutron guides (by optimizing them for specific instruments) and a new cold source and will help
to ensure the NCNR’s competitiveness. If expected increases in NIST’s funding in the immediate
future materialize, a concomitant personnel increase should be made at the NCNR to meet the
needs of this transition. This becomes important when considering this country’s need for
neutron scattering research in years to come, given the recent shutdown of the Intense Pulsed
Neutron Source and lingering uncertainties about the long-term future of the Los Alamos
Neutron Science Center and the HFIR.
A good example of how the NCNR has met the needs of U.S. researchers is the agility
with which samples of the new Fe-based high-temperature superconductors were run on the
appropriate instruments. When scientists from other laboratories approached NCNR staff with
samples of these materials, the scattering studies were performed, results analyzed, and a
manuscript submitted to a prestigious journal within a few days. The researchers managed to
obtain some of the earliest definitive results on the structural and magnetic phase transitions
quickly, resulting in immediate scientific impact and numerous citations that have put NCNR
personnel and collaborators in a leadership position in the field.
Discussions of the Panel on Neutron Research with NCNR users and a review of the user
survey conducted by the NCNR User Group (NUG) yielded the conclusion that by and large the
NCNR user community is satisfied with access to the NCNR facilities, the NCNR proposal
system, the facilities themselves, and the assistance provided by NCNR staff, who are described
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by users as “helpful,” “dedicated,” and “mindful of tending to user needs.” Users reported that,
as in practically all such facilities, there are certain areas that could be improved―examples
include transmitting data to users in a standard format and improving the types and quantities of
ancillary equipment (such as high magnetic fields and millikelvin-temperature refrigerators,
high-temperature furnaces, pressure cells, controlled-humidity cells, complementary and
simultaneous optical microscopy and optical spectroscopy tools, and nuclear magnetic resonance
microscopy). Often the availability of one or more of these items, as compared with the
availability of neutron flux alone, makes the crucial difference in carrying out experiments in a
competitive field. Another challenge that most facilities face is to ensure uniformity for
interchangeable use of such tools on different instruments. The NCNR management and staff
are mindful of these challenges, and they have allocated substantial effort to developing user-
friendly data-analysis programs, although it is not clear how close they are to meeting the ideal
of standardized data-processing routines that can be used for experiments at all facilities with
trivial modifications. Their strategy of trying to enlist the user community to submit proposals to
develop some of these ancillary items of equipment has met with limited success. This result
probably points to the fact that the development of sophisticated specialized equipment is
generally left to scientific and engineering professionals such as NIST staff, with the selective
involvement and collaboration of user scientists. An example seems to be the Multi Axis Crystal
Spectrometer (MACS) inelastic spectrometer designed and developed with much involvement by
researchers at the Johns Hopkins University, with funding from that university, NIST, and the
National Science Foundation (NSF).
The sample of research projects provided to the panel suggests that the science done by
NCNR scientists is of high quality, as is their expertise in neutron scattering. The
encouragement by NCNR management of the scientific activities of its staff is a commendable
complement to its related focus on their service to the user community. The instrument scientists
have some discretionary time and generally are able to use it effectively.
For certain experiments, such as powder diffraction, the staff encouraged many users to
send their samples, which could be run by the staff more efficiently than if the users traveled to
the NCNR to perform the experiments. Small Angle Neutron Scattering (SANS) users have also
been encouraged to send samples to staff to run in short measurements in order to assess
feasibility.
Of course, while such trends should not be taken to extremes (a cadre of expert users in
the community is also essential for the success of the neutron scattering enterprise in the United
States), it may be a trend that can be appropriately grown. There seems to be an inclination for
some new users, particularly interdisciplinary users, to be somewhat uninterested in developing
expertise and sophistication in the techniques of scattering; this makes it imperative to maintain
the scientific and technical excellence of the NCNR staff. Nevertheless, in order to generate
interest and expertise in the outside scientific community, it continues to be important that
NCNR scientists maintain outreach efforts (with an organized presence at major scientific
conferences, for example) and increase throughput at the neutron schools that they have been
organizing.
The facility seems to be serving the needs of industrial users reasonably well, although it
should continue to take a proactive role in educating industrial scientists about the unique
advantages that neutrons offer in investigating certain problems. There appears to be substantial
industrial involvement in the facility, through participating research teams (PRTs) or direct
collaboration with NIST scientists. The Polymers Division in NIST’s Materials Science and
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Engineering Laboratory in particular has been responsible for much industrial involvement with
NCNR programs, many of which use the NCNR facilities as crucial characterization tools. For
example, the NCNR has developed collaborations with companies such as Xerox, IBM, Merck
and Company, Corning Incorporated, the Dow Chemical Company, Hitachi, and Intel
Corporation. In particular, these industrial users seem eager to take advantage of the SANS
instruments and reflectometers. A successful example is the Ultra-Small Angle Neutron
Scattering (USANS) instrument, which was fairly undersubscribed until an active campaign to
advertise its capabilities resulted in many proposals, many of which are from industry.
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