D11 - Lowest momentum transfer & lowest background small-angle neutron scattering instrument

D11 is currently being upgraded and will open to users in Spring 2024 with a new primary guide and new collimation.

D11 is the archetype of a long, pinhole geometry instrument for small angle neutron scattering (SANS), designed for the study of large scale structures in soft matter systems, chemistry, biology, solid state physics and materials science.

It has received a new ³He multi-tube (Reuter-Stokes) detector of 256 tubes in January 2021, totalling 2 m² of detection area.

D11 is being relocated on the new H15 guide and will benefit from an improved collimation system and neutron flux.

An increased brilliance by a factor 2-3 is expected, allowing faster acquisitions and better statistics. An elliptically-shaped focusing end-of-guide will allow a 10-fold increase in flux at short detector distances for samples with challenging coherent-to-incoherent signal, such as occurs in contrast-variation SANS (CV-SANS), especially for biological samples. The new collimation features 35 m of absorbing tubes, ~70 sintered B₄C frames, four motorized slits + 3 XY multi-holes diaphragms in ¹⁰B₄C to have full control over the beam shape including when gravity plays a role and guarantee the smallest achievable background for low angle measurements.

• Polymers and colloids
• Polymer blends, solutions ; Micelles ; Dendrimers ; Liquid crystals ; Gels ; Reaction kinetics of mixed systems
• Materials science
• Phase separation in alloys and glasses ; Morphologies of superalloys ; Microporosity in ceramics ; Interfaces and surfaces of catalysts
• Biological macromolecules
• Size and shape of proteins, nucleic acids ; Biomembranes ; Drug vectors
• Magnetism
• Flux line lattices in superconductors ; Magnetic correlations