Low-Q Diffractometer | LQD

Surfaces and Interfaces

The LQD is designed to study large-scale structures with dimensions from 10 to 1000 Å. Examples of problems that LQD can help solve include phase separation, morphology, and critical phenomena in hard and soft matter and in magnetic structures, colloid and polymer structure, biomolecular organization, and bubble formation in metals.

A significant feature of the LQD is that it accesses a broad range of Q (0.003 to 0.5 Å-1) in a single measurement by using the time-of-flight (TOF) technique without any changes to the instrument's physical configuration. The LQD uses an intense source of long-wavelength ("cold") neutrons over a range of 1 to 16 Å, making it the brightest TOF low-Q instrument in the world.