This award provides continuing support for the establishment and operation of the neutron scattering user facility located at NIST in the Cold Neutron Guide Hall. The project is funded jointly by NSF and NIST. Instrumentation well suited to the neutron scattering community will offer a balanced cross section of advanced neutron scattering instrumentation for high resolution studies of the microstructure and dynamics of virtually all classes of materials. Instruments available to users will include a small-angle neutron scattering (SANS) spectrometer with polarized beam capability, and a spin inelastic neutron scattering (SPINS) spectrometer using supermirror polarizers and a "Drabkin" flipper. The SPINS spectrometer can potentially achieve an order of magnitude improvement in energy resolution over conventional triple-axis spectrometers, which would open up new opportunities in the study of low energy excitation in condensed matter systems. The SPINS project is cost-shared equally (50/50) between NSF and NIST. The SANS instrument is expected to be fully utilized by researchers in condensed matter physics, chemistry, biology and materials science to obtain structural information on a scale size from 1 to nearly 500 nanomicrometers, on materials such as polymers, metal alloys, ceramics, porous media structured fluids and gels, biological macromolecules and magnetic materials that in many cases cannot be obtained by any other techniques. These instruments will provide state-of-the-art capability unequaled in this country, and will be competitive with the best facilities worldwide. The instruments will be operated in a user mode. Proposal review and selection will be by an external Program Advisory Committee, with proposal selection being based on scientific merit of the projects proposed.//
