Imaging with cold neutrons

Neutrons for imaging purposes are provided mainly from thermal beam lines at suitable facilities around the world. The access to cold neutrons is presently limited to very few places only. However, many challenging options for imaging with cold neutrons have been found out, given by the interaction behavior of the observed materials with neutrons in the cold energy range (3–10 Å).For absorbing materials, the interaction probability increases proportionally with the wavelength with the consequence of more contrast but less transmission with cold neutrons. Many materials are predominantly scattering neutrons, in particular most of crystalline structural materials. In these cases, cold neutrons play an important role by covering the energy range of the most important Bragg edges given by the lattice planes of the crystallites.This particular behavior can be used for at least two important aspects—choosing the right energy of the initial beam enables to have a material more or less transparent, and a direct macroscopic visualization of the crystalline structure and its change in a manufacturing process.Since 2006, PSI operates its second beam line for neutron imaging, where cold neutrons are provided from a liquid deuterium cold source (operated at 25 K). It has been designed to cover the most current aspects in neutron imaging research with the help of high flexibility. This has been done with changeable inlet apertures, a turbine based velocity selector, two beam positions and variable detector systems, satisfying the demands of the individual investigation.The most important detection system was found to be a micro-tomography system that enables studies in the presently best spatial resolution. In this case, the high contrast from the sample interaction process and the high detection probability for the cold neutrons combines in an ideal combination for the best possible performance.Recently, it was found out that the energy selective studies might become a research field in its own sing the Bragg edge behavior and its modification to contribute to material research by the direct visualization of textures and the observation of stress and strain. This topic is still in the beginning but has some important relevance for the design of future beam lines for imaging at the pulsed spallation sources.Considering the neutrons to be waves, the cold energy range is important to push and to investigate phase effects in detail with high spatial resolution. Although a lot of studies have been done in this respect previously, there is enough space to study refraction at the edges, diffraction and total reflection with the best possible accuracy, and to figure out when and why neutrons interfere. Phase contrast methods like grating interference methods have to be implemented as a user option, which enables one to define their future application range.