The Australian Centre for Neutron Scattering (ACNS), formerly the Bragg Institute, is a landmark

neutron The neutron is a subatomic particle, symbol or , that has no electric charge, and a mass slightly greater than that of a proton. The Discovery of the neutron, neutron was discovered by James Chadwick in 1932, leading to the discovery of nucle ...

and

X-ray An X-ray (also known in many languages as Röntgen radiation) is a form of high-energy electromagnetic radiation with a wavelength shorter than those of ultraviolet rays and longer than those of gamma rays. Roughly, X-rays have a wavelength ran ...

scattering In physics, scattering is a wide range of physical processes where moving particles or radiation of some form, such as light or sound, are forced to deviate from a straight trajectory by localized non-uniformities (including particles and radiat ...

facility in

Australia Australia, officially the Commonwealth of Australia, is a country comprising mainland Australia, the mainland of the Australia (continent), Australian continent, the island of Tasmania and list of islands of Australia, numerous smaller isl ...

. It is located at the

Australian Nuclear Science and Technology Organisation The Australian Nuclear Science and Technology Organisation (ANSTO) is a statutory body of the Australian Government that is responsible for nuclear research and the production of radioisotopes for nuclear medicine. It was established in Apr ...

's (

ANSTO The Australian Nuclear Science and Technology Organisation (ANSTO) is a statutory body of the Australian Government that is responsible for nuclear research and the production of radioisotopes for nuclear medicine. It was established in Apr ...

) Lucas Heights site, 40 km south-west of

Sydney Sydney is the capital city of the States and territories of Australia, state of New South Wales and the List of cities in Australia by population, most populous city in Australia. Located on Australia's east coast, the metropolis surrounds Syd ...

, in

New South Wales New South Wales (commonly abbreviated as NSW) is a States and territories of Australia, state on the Eastern states of Australia, east coast of :Australia. It borders Queensland to the north, Victoria (state), Victoria to the south, and South ...

, Australia. The Institute was formed in December 2002 in preparation for the start-up of the

Open-pool Australian lightwater reactor The Open-pool Australian lightwater reactor (OPAL) is a 20 megawatt (MW) swimming pool reactor, swimming pool nuclear research reactor. Officially opened in April 2007, it replaced the High Flux Australian Reactor as Australia's only nuclea ...

in 2006, and named as a tribute to the father-and-son team Sir William Henry Bragg and son

William Lawrence Bragg Sir William Lawrence Bragg (31 March 1890 – 1 July 1971) was an Australian-born British physicist who shared the 1915 Nobel Prize in Physics with his father William Henry Bragg "for their services in the analysis of crystal structure by ...

, who were jointly awarded the

Nobel Prize The Nobel Prizes ( ; ; ) are awards administered by the Nobel Foundation and granted in accordance with the principle of "for the greatest benefit to humankind". The prizes were first awarded in 1901, marking the fifth anniversary of Alfred N ...

for Physics in 1915 for pioneering the analysis of

crystal structure In crystallography, crystal structure is a description of ordered arrangement of atoms, ions, or molecules in a crystalline material. Ordered structures occur from intrinsic nature of constituent particles to form symmetric patterns that repeat ...

s by means of X-rays. Following a restructure of scientific operations in 2016, the Institute was split to form two distinct research platforms, ACNS and the National Deuteration Facility. ACNS operates the cold- and thermal-neutron scattering facility associated with the OPAL research reactor, including 14 operational neutron beam instruments, and one instrument in transfer from the BER-II Research Reactor at the

Helmholtz-Zentrum Berlin Helmholtz-Zentrum Berlin für Materialien und Energie (Helmholtz Centre for Materials and Energy, HZB) is part of the Helmholtz Association of German Research Centres. The institute studies the structure and dynamics of materials and investigates ...

. It houses a helium-3 polarisation system to enable polarised-neutron experiments, two small-angle X-ray scattering instruments, an X-ray reflectometer and Physical Properties Measurement System. Neutron scattering covers an extremely wide range of disciplines from fundamental physics, through chemistry, materials, and biology, right through to interdisciplinary areas such as engineering and archaeology. Science at the Australian Centre for Neutron Scattering covers many of these areas, usually in collaboration with other groups, with a focus on the application of neutron scattering to crystallography, soft condensed matter,

solid-state physics Solid-state physics is the study of rigid matter, or solids, through methods such as solid-state chemistry, quantum mechanics, crystallography, electromagnetism, and metallurgy. It is the largest branch of condensed matter physics. Solid-state phy ...

physical chemistry Physical chemistry is the study of macroscopic and microscopic phenomena in chemical systems in terms of the principles, practices, and concepts of physics such as motion, energy, force, time, thermodynamics, quantum chemistry, statistical mech ...

and increasingly biology. The ACNS identifies 6 key scientific projects: The Food Science Project, Thermo-Mechanical Processes, Energy Materials, Magnetism, Cultural Heritage and Planetary Materials. From its inception until 2016, the Institute was led by Robert Robinson. In 2016 Jamie Schulz became leader of the ACNS. ACNS currently employs approximately 100 staff. Access to the neutron instrumentation at the ACNS is available to all qualified applications through either proprietary fee-for-service research, non-proprietary peer reviewed merit access, non-proprietary peer reviewed research program process for 3-year programs, or fast-turnaround experiments. Research proposals are accepted and reviewed twice yearly via th
ACNS Customer Portal

References

External links

Official site of the Australian Centre for Neutron Scattering

The First 10 Years of the Bragg Institute: 2002-2012
Nuclear organizations Scientific organisations based in Australia Research institutes established in 2002 {{Australia-gov-stub