Small Angle Neutron Scattering Applications in Fueld Science

INTRODUCTION Small angle neutron scattering (SANS) is a versatile technique', extensively used in condensed matter research, spanning the scientific fields including polymer science, metallic alloys, magnetic materials, porous materials, ceramics, composites, structural biology and colloidal systems of industrial and technological importance. SANS is useful to study both solid and liquid systems to obtain the size, morphology, molecular weight, particle size distribution in a size range of 10 to 1000 A, as well as to study the phenomena such as phase separation, crystallization etc. In the presence of inter-particle interactions (e.g. ionic micelles) this will yield information on the surface potentials (e.g. surface charge density) of the colloids2.