Characterization of glasses for 3He neutron spin filter cells

Polarized 3He neutron spin filters are suitable devices for polarizing neutrons at spallation neutron facilities because of the wide coverage in energy range and the large solid-angles. The glass cell plays an important role in the 3He spin filters. In order to get good quality of glass cells, the investigation on the microscopic structure would be helpful. In this paper, we report on the results of X-ray diffraction for several glasses. We observed a correlation between the position of the first peak and the helium permeation velocity. We also observed a small difference in the diffraction curve among GE180 glasses with different thermal treatment. Desirable structure for 3He spin filters is discussed.