Poster: POLDI: a tof-diffractometer for residual stress investigations at PSI

Authors: U. Stuhr and G. Schuck



Conference: 10th European Powder Diffraction Conference (EPDIC), 1st to the 4th September 2006 in Geneva, Switzerland , PDF



Abstract:

POLDI is a novel type of tof-diffractometer at PSI, which is designed mainly for strain scanning experiments. The concept of the instrument is based on multiple overlapping neutron pulses and allows to tune the resolution and the intensity independently. The dependence of the time-of-flight of the neutrons on the scattering angle is used as extra information in order to analyze the data. This concept made it possible to build a time-of-flight diffractometer at a continuous neutron source with short flight path, high resolution and high intensity. The best resolutions (ΔQ/Q , FWHM) achievable are between 1.2·10-3 and 1.8·10-3. at Q = 2 Å-1 and Q = 8 Å-1, respectively. Since the neutron beam at the sample has only a width of 3 mm the instrument is best suited for experiments with small samples or small gauge volumes within large samples where high resolution in a broad Q-range is required.
The principle concept and the layout of the instrument with its main components (chopper, neutron mirror and the 3He detector in time focusing geometry) will be presented and the performance of the instrument will be demonstrated with some experimental results.