SNS Sample Environment

Neutron Sciences five-year strategic plan for sample environment. Comments are encouraged.

The Sample Environment Group provides equipment and support for studying materials under controlled conditions (temperature, pressure, magnetic field, chemical environment, etc.). When you come to SNS or HFIR to conduct an experiment, our “front line” teams will be there to support you. Although we currently offer a wide range of capabilities, we realize that these capabilities must continually grow. Therefore we also have a busy research & development team. We encourage you to partner with them to develop new equipment and techniques.

New User Partnership Program for Sample Environment Equipment Development

Neutron Sciences has initiated a new program to encourage the collaborative development of sample environment equipment. Several productive collaborations between users and the Sample Environment Group are already under way, and the new program will fund even more projects through a simple process:

Interested users fill out a one-page template (Word, PDF).
Sample Environment staff promptly contact the primary investigator to discuss the proposal.
The Sample Environment Steering Committee (existing group of internal and external scientists) reviews and prioritizes proposals in May 2010.

Projects will be awarded and started as budget allows. Users and ORNL staff will be engaged in the actual development work. The scope is relatively small-scale (but high impact!) projects with a materials budget between $5000 and $20000 and some additional funds available to travel to ORNL and participate in equipment commissioning. Proposals may make use of existing equipment (e.g., designing a special insert for an existing cryostat). Interaction between users and ORNL staff (Sample Environment staff, instrument scientists, etc.) will be a key consideration for successful proposals, as well as a deliverable that will benefit the larger user program at SNS and HFIR. For more information, contact Lou Santodonato.

WKU Designs Software for AGES and PAGES

To kick off the AGES collaboration, Landon Solomon (left) of SNS takes (left to right) Jacob Baxley, Dr. Doug Harper, and Nathan Campbell on a tour of SNS.

In the spring of 2009, the Sample Environment (SE) team began an expansion of its gas-handling capabilities to accommodate experiments in which users focus on probing their samples with neutrons, while simultaneously monitoring in situ gas absorption. An Automated Gas Environment System (AGES) has been on POWGEN’s (SNS Powder Diffractometer) wish list since the end of instrument construction. Completion of AGES was accomplished by the shared efforts of SE group members Bruce Hill and Landon Solomon and staff from Western Kentucky University (WKU).

Highlights:

AGES expands the gas-handling capabilities at SNS.
This system helps users who focus on monitoring in situ gas absorption.
Physics Department at WKU collaborated with SNS by offering an elective course in which students would write and test a LabVIEW virtual instrument (VI) for AGES.
AGES will be installed and dedicated to experiments conducted at POWGEN.
The PAGES system is complete and ready for user requests.

The Physics Department at WKU collaborated with SNS SE staff by offering an elective course in which students would write and test a LabVIEW virtual instrument (VI) for AGES. At the completion of their course in May 2009, students presented the software package and expressed to their professor, Dr. Doug Harper, their enthusiasm for the opportunity afforded by the course. One of the students, Nathan Campbell, was so excited about the project that he applied for an internship to work on the AGES offspring PAGES (Portable Automated Gas Environment System). From June through August, Nathan worked alongside SE staff to modify software for PAGES.

How the Two Units Compare

AGES/PAGES hardware designer Bruce Hill.

AGES is a gas-handling unit that

can mix up to 10 gases precisely (through mass flow controllers)—3 hazardous gases and 7 inert gases, manages hazardous gases in a separate cabinet, is capable of preventing initial contamination with an automated pump/purge system from source to destination,
uses compressed air and vacuum sensors for remote control, and offers a software-managed warning to ensure that the system does not pump on an open gas cylinder.

PAGES is a portable gas-handling unit that

allows flow from 3 different gases—2 precisely (through mass flow controllers),
offers a line pump-out feature, and
allows multiple gas selection with correction factors built into the software.

AGES will be installed and dedicated to experiments conducted at POWGEN. The PAGES system is complete and ready for user requests. It was recently prepared for a user experiment at BASIS (SNS Backscattering Spectrometer). All hardware layout and fabrication was performed at SNS by Bruce Hill.

Click image for a larger view: