Thirty meters small angle neutron scattering instrument at China advanced research reactor

A high resolution 30 m small angle neutron scattering (SANS) instrument has been constructed by the Institute of Chemistry, Chinese Academy of Sciences (ICCAS), and installed at China Advanced Research Reactor (CARR). It is equipped with a mechanical velocity selector, pinhole (including multi-pinhole) collimation system, sample chamber, and high resolution two dimensional 3He position sensitive neutron detector. The flexible variations of incident neutron wavelength, source to sample distance, sample to detector distance and the presence of neutron focusing lenses enable a wide Q range from 0.001 Å−1 to 0.5 Å−1 in reciprocal space and to optimize the resolution required. The instrument is the first SANS instrument in China, and can be widely used for the structure characterization of various materials, as well as kinetic and dynamic observation during external stimulation. The design and characteristics of the instrument are presented in the manuscript.