
DMC: Cold Neutron Diffractometer
DMC is currently being upgraded and equipped with a new high-performance 2D position-sensitive detector. The installation work successfully entered the hot commissioning phase. DMC will return to the SINQ user program later this year.
The cold neutron diffractometer DMC is a flexible instrument for efficient neutron powder and single-crystal diffraction studies in the fields of crystallography, solid state physics, chemistry and material science, in particular for the determination of weak magnetic intensities. Special features are the large high-efficiency 3He detector with 2D readout, the oscillating radial collimator system to suppress peaks from the sample environment and low instrumental background due to optimized shielding. The versatility of the instrument is supported by a large diversity of available sample environment devices. Situated at a cold neutron guide and with the accessible wavelength range of 2.3 Å to 5 Å, DMC is complementary to the thermal high-resolution diffractometer HRPT and is designed for high-intensity performance.
Typical experiments on DMC are the determination of magnetic structures on powder samples, the efficient measurement of magnetic or crystallographic phase transitions, the analysis of large unit cell structures, reciprocal space mapping in single crystals, and many more. Some examples of DMC results are listed in the publications section.
Details of the instrument can be found in the description section, in particular the instrumental parameters and the available sample environment for DMC.
DMC is operated by the Laboratory for Neutron Scattering and Imaging LNS.