99 research outputs found
The reflection of very cold neutrons from diamond powder nanoparticles
We study possibility of efficient reflection of very cold neutrons (VCN) from
powders of nanoparticles. In particular, we measured the scattering of VCN at a
powder of diamond nanoparticles as a function of powder sample thickness,
neutron velocity and scattering angle. We observed extremely intense scattering
of VCN even off thin powder samples. This agrees qualitatively with the model
of independent nanoparticles at rest. We show that this intense scattering
would allow us to use nanoparticle powders very efficiently as the very first
reflectors for neutrons with energies within a complete VCN range up to
eV
Effect of Particle Sizes on the Efficiency of Fluorinated Nanodiamond Neutron Reflectors
Over a decade ago, it was confirmed that detonation nanodiamond (DND) powders reflect very cold neutrons (VCNs) diffusively at any incidence angle and that they reflect cold neutrons quasi-specularly at small incidence angles. In the present publication, we report the results of a study on the effect of particle sizes on the overall efficiency of neutron reflectors made of DNDs. To perform this study, we separated, by centrifugation, the fraction of finer DND nanoparticles (which are referred to as S-DNDs here) from a broad initial size distribution and experimentally and theoretically compared the performance of such a neutron reflector with that from deagglomerated fluorinated DNDs (DF-DNDs). Typical commercially available DNDs with the size of ~4.3 nm are close to the optimum for VCNs with a typical velocity of ~50 m/s, while smaller and larger DNDs are more efficient for faster and slower VCN velocities, respectively. Simulations show that, for a realistic reflector geometry, the replacement of DF-DNDs (a reflector with the best achieved performance) by S-DNDs (with smaller size DNDs) increases the neutron albedo in the velocity range above ~60 m/s. This increase in the albedo results in an increase in the density of faster VCNs in such a reflector cavity of up to ~25% as well as an increase in the upper boundary of the velocities of efficient VCN reflection
Determination of Size, Morphology, and Nitrogen Impurity Location in Treated Detonation Nanodiamond by Transmission Electron Microscopy
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