NDP Notes and News

Items related to the development, application, and discussion of the Neutron Depth Profiling technique

11 October 2021

Announcement from Markus Trunk of the MLZ group at FRMII regarding the N4DP instrument.

Dear N4DP users,

I want to inform you that the N4DP instrument has become an additional part of the PGAA facility and is supervised by the PGAA group of MLZ. Now, Zsolt Révay, being the supervisor of the PGAA group, is the responsible and contact person also for the NDP and the N4DP instrument at MLZ. With this step, the PGAA group supervises the following instruments at the MLZ: PGAA, NAA, NDP, PGAI+NT and FANGAS. You will find Information on these projects at: https://mlz-garching.de/pgaa

And Zsolt Révay has provided the added information:

As Markus mentioned, I am taking over the NDP measurements at PGAA. The next cycle is planned to start in March next year, however, without cold neutron source. Our neutron guide is optimized for cold neutrons, so the thermal operation will drastically decrease our flux (with at least an order of magnitude) which can partly be compensated with the guide setup and longer measurement times. The actual conditions will be seen only during the tests early March, then we can plan the experiments in greater detail.

Anyhow, it seems clear that measurements needing higher flux won't be doable during the upcoming 1.5 year. This means that we won't be able to perform any dynamic or operando measurements. I am afraid, this affects many of the recent proposals. We can perform the ex situ experiments as planned last year, they may take longer, though. The prolongation will be ensured from our internal beam times, we are going to discuss if it causes changes in approved stays. I am going to contact all of you who have valid proposals to agree in the details.

We are going to reserve beam time for NDP user measurements the last two weeks of the first cycle (~1-15 April) and most likely the first three weeks of the second cycle: (~1-20 June).

Thank you for your understanding.

with kind regards,

Zsolt Révay

Zsolt adds: This is the temporary situation. For the most current updates on the facility operation please consult:

https://mlz-garching.de/ndp

10 October 2021

NIST has published an article on NDP in their "Taking Measure Blog" entitled:

"Detecting the Flavors of Important Elements With Neutron Depth Profiling,"

featuring Jamie Weaver.

October 2021

NIST News Release for publication on a new Lithium Ion Battery study that includes NDP measurements. The article includes a video representation of the study.

Impeding the Impedance: Research Reveals How to Design a Better Next-Generation Lithium-Ion Battery

International Conference on Methods and Applications of Radioanalytical Chemistry (MARC)

www.marcconference.org

(MARC XII is rescheduled from 2021 to April 3-8, 2022)

ABSTRACT DEADLINE; DECEMBER 21 - A HARD AND FAST DATE!!

The location of the conference will be Courtyard King Kamehameha’s Kona Beach Hotel in downtown Kona, Hawaii.

Of special note: Papers and Posters using the NDP technique are welcome in Session 4B.

Development and Application of Nuclear Analytical Methods with Neutron Beam Technologies

Organized by:

Kenan Ünlü, Pennsylvania State University, USA;

Lei Cao, Ohio State University, USA; and

R. Gregory Downing, National Institute for Standards and Technology (retired), USA.

One branch of nuclear analytical methods involves the use of collimated neutron beams for non-destructive analysis and characterization of materials. Neutron beam energies can range from fast neutrons as produced by neutron generators for in-field applications, or produced by stationary neutron sources such as a research nuclear reactor delivering either thermal or cold neutron beam for a highly-sensitive material probe. A recent successful application of neutron beam technology is the characterization of lithium content and movement inside a Li-ion battery to assist in energy storage studies. The development and application of neutron-based instrumentation and methods are welcome in this session, which includes, but is not limited to, neutron depth profiling, prompt gamma neutron activation analysis, neutron imaging, etc. Use of neutron generators, advanced sensors, and other instrumentation are also invited to this session.

Below is an interesting graph from Google's Ngram Viewer showing the use of the phrase "neutron depth profiling" in books/literature. I strongly suspect the low-frequency use of the phrase after about 1998 is because the common term for the technique is "NDP" in recent documents. The search term "NDP" will not work in the search on Ngram Viewer because "NDP" is also an abbreviation for several other phrases unrelated to neutron depth profiling.

2018

2017

11 October 2017

IAEA announces e-Learning Tutorials

Includes 2 modules on basic principles of NDP

The IAEA is glad to announce that the IAEA e-learning course on Neutron Activation Analysis (NAA) is now on-line and at the disposal of NAA practitioners, users and other stakeholders in the Member States. The course is hosted in the Agency’s Learning Management System:

http://elearning.iaea.org/m2/course/index.php?categoryid=108

A NUCLEUS account (https://nucleus.iaea.org/Pages/default.aspx) is required to enroll and access the course. Once you are logged in NUCLEUS, the enrollment key to the NAA e-learning course is: IAEAelearningNAA

We invite you to explore, test and use the course, and ask you to distribute this information among NAA practitioners and other interested parties in your organization/country.

With best regards,

Nuno Barradas and Danas Ridikas

Project background

It has been observed that retirement and/or leave of experienced staff often results in gaps in the NAA employed with the newly entered staff, with associated consequences for the identification of sources of error and the validity of the results. The IAEA addressed this issue by developing an e-learning tool to increase human capacity building in NAA, covering all aspects of this powerful technique. The e-learning NAA tool is particularly directed at young specialists or beginners without sufficient experience of conducting NAA independently, but also to experienced practitioners who want to implement or use another variety of NAA, technicians and analysts, users of NAA and other stakeholders who wish to understand the techniques better, professors teaching nuclear sciences and applications & nuclear analytical techniques, and students interested in nuclear sciences and applications & nuclear analytical techniques. Some specific modules are directly applicable to nuclear spectrometry laboratories, not necessarily performing NAA.

Email: N.Pessoa-Barradas@iaea.org | T: +43 1 2600 22771 | Follow us on www.iaea.org

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2016

Photo Credit: unknown

Prof. Dr. Jochen P. Biersack

9/12/1933–9/8/2016

Obituary: http://dx.doi.org/10.1016/j.nimb.2016.12.018

2015

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