WOMBAT - High Intensity Powder Diffractometer

WOMBAT is the name of the new neutron High Intensity Powder Diffractometer at Australia's new research reactor OPAL, ANSTO.

The instrument serves to determine the crystalline structures of materials using neutron radiation analogical to X-ray techniques.

It will operate with thermal neutrons. It has been designed for highest flux and data acquisition speed in order to deliver time resolved diffraction patterns in a fraction of a second. WOMBAT will concentrate on in-situ studies and time critical investigations, such as structure determinations, texture measurements and reciprocal space mapping of single crystals in most different sample environments serving the physics, chemistry, materials, minerals and earth-science communities. WOMBAT is part of the Bragg Institute's park of neutron scattering instruments.

Its namesake (the wombat) is a marsupial indigenous to Australia.

External links

* [http://www.ansto.gov.au/ansto/bragg/2005/hipd/instrument_hipd.html WOMBAT home page]