Talk:Neutron diffraction

Rewrite needed
This article is poorly written, and sometimes misleading (I am a professional in the field). Who's up for a re-write? — Preceding unsigned comment added by PinOats (talk • contribs) 12:49, 26 January 2023 (UTC)


 * I am not an expert in neutron diffraction, but I can give you a second opinion on edits and aspects of diffraction. For instance, I just removed "imaging" from the short description and the 1st Figure caption as that was not right. Ldm1954 (talk) 14:39, 26 March 2023 (UTC)

Separate articles?
While conceptually similar, neutron diffraction is fundamentally different from neutron scattering. Possibly it could be described that diffraction is a specific type of scattering. However, in my opinion the differences merit seperate articles, with appropriate links - SHW, Los Alamos Neutron Science Center. —Preceding unsigned comment added by 65.19.44.150 (talk • contribs) 12:18, 24 June 2006

minor changes
I am experienced with neutron and x-ray scattering. I have edited the article slightly to correct minor factual inaccuracies. —Preceding unsigned comment added by 69.252.160.199 (talk • contribs) 01:33, 23 February 2007

Typo?
Shouldn't this paragraph end by saying "higher atomic NUMBER materials." rather than "higher atomic WEIGHT materials."?

"Neutron diffraction can be used to establish the structure of low atomic number materials like proteins and surfactants much more easily with lower flux than at a synchrotron radiation source. This is because some low atomic number materials have a higher cross section for neutron interaction than higher atomic weight materials." —Preceding unsigned comment added by Stever7070 (talk • contribs) 18:10, 21 December 2007

ToF
I'm no expert, and I may be wrong so I haven't changed anything, but I'm not sure about the following statement:

"At a spallation source the time of flight technique is used to sort the energies of the incident neutrons (Higher energy neutrons are faster), so no monochromator is needed, but rather a series of aperture elements synchronized to filter neutron pulses with the desired wavelength."

A spallation source is naturally pulsed, and the whole point of the Time of flight diffractometer (as opposed to spectrometer) is that the white beam interacts with the sample and the known path lengths (source --> sample, sample --> detector) can be used to determine the energy (ie. wavelength) of the neutrons at certain angles (similar to EDD in xray)? Wikipedia in general seems a bit confused about the difference between ToF spectrometer and ToF diffractometers (unless I've managed to confuse myself and there is no difference...) but as I said I'm not really sure enough of anything to change it. Sources that I think agree with what I've said:

ISIS HRPD instrument manual: http://www.isis.stfc.ac.uk/instruments/hrpd/documents/hrpd-manual6735.pdf

UCL/Birkbeck Powder Diffraction on the Web Course pages: http://pd.chem.ucl.ac.uk/pdnn/inst3/diff3.htm

UCL CHEMM004 lecture notes (esp. notes labelled neutrons): http://teach.chem.ucl.ac.uk/gen_course/3044_lectures.html

Hopefully someone who knows a bit about this area will be able to clear this up if there is an error. Thanks! GoddersUK (talk) 17:07, 8 May 2012 (UTC)

Neutron capture
The article does not say whether a fraction of the neutrons can be captured by the nuclei of the target.--109.166.137.46 (talk) 18:24, 28 November 2019 (UTC)