No abstract

In order to clarify the mechanism of hydrogen diffusion in cubic Laves phase , we have performed high-resolution quasielastic neutron scattering measurements on (x = 0.6 and 1.1) in the temperature range 10-320 K. It is found that the diffusive motion of hydrogen in this system can be described in terms of two jump processes: the fast localized H motion within hexagons formed by interstitial g sites and the slower hopping from one hexagon to the other. This model is also supported by neutron diffraction measurements showing that the sublattice of g sites in is split into hexagons well separated from each other. The behaviour of the elastic incoherent structure factor for suggests that only a fraction of the H atoms participate in the fast localized motion, and this fraction increases with temperature. Comparison of the properties of and other Laves phase hydrides with g-site occupation shows a clear correlation between the parameters of the two jump processes and the g-g distances (within the hexagons) and (between different hexagons).

We describe a novel cold neutron spectrometer under development at NIST optimized for wave vector resolved spectroscopy with incident energies between 2.1 meV and 20 meV and energy resolution from 0.05 meV (E i = 2.1 meV) to 3.0 meV (E i = 20 meV). By using a 1428 cm 2 double focusing PG (0 0 2) monochromator close to the National Institute of Standards and Technology (NIST) cold neutron source the instrument provides up to 5 × 10 8 neutrons cm −2 s −1 on a 8 cm 2 sample area. The measured performance is consistent with Monte Carlo simulations. The monochromating system, which includes radial collimators, three filters and a variable beam aperture, offers considerable flexibility in optimizing Q-resolution, energy resolution and intensity. The detector system will consist of an array of 20 channels which combined will subtend a solid angle of 0.2 sr. This is approximately a factor of 40 more than a conventional triple axis spectrometer. Each detector channel contains a vertically focusing double crystal analyzer system (DXAL) actuated by a single stepping motor. We find identical integrated reflectivity at approximately 10% coarser energy resolution for the 130 mosaic double bounce analyzer as compared to a conventional 25 analyzer at the same energy. The vertical focusing of the DXAL allows for smaller detectors for enhanced signal to noise with 8 • vertical acceptance. Options for post sample collimators and filters provide flexibility in the choice of scattered beam energy and wavevector resolution.