Dr Gregory Smith

Dr Gregory Smith is a SANS instrument scientist at the ISIS Neutron and Muon Source in the UK. Gregory is a physical chemist and obtained degrees in Chemistry from the University of Bristol (UK), followed by positions at the University of Sheffield (UK) and the Niels Bohr Institute at the University of Copenhagen (Denmark). Gregory’s research explores the interactions and self-assembly of soft matter and colloids, such as surfactants, polymers, and nanoparticles, using scattering and isotopic labelling to understand their structure from the ångström to the micrometre scale. As an instrument scientist at a neutron facility, neutron scattering is the technique he frequently uses. Gregory is responsible for Larmor at ISIS, a flexible instrument optimised for Larmor precession techniques, but typically used for techniques such as small-angle neutron scattering (SANS)
and spin-echo small-angle neutron scattering (SESANS).

Talk abstract: Elastic neutron scattering: Studying structures over many orders of magnitude

Beams of neutrons, produced at large-scale facilities (such as the ISIS Neutron and Muon Source in Oxfordshire), provide excellent methods to investigate the structure and dynamics of materials. I am an instrument scientist in the SANS (small-angle neutron scattering) Group at ISIS, and I use our instruments to study the structure of materials on the ångström to micrometre scale. When only structures are studied, elastic scattering techniques, where no energy is transferred from the neutron to the material are used, and the lectures will focus on some of these.

In the first part, neutron facilities and instrumentation will be introduced. Focusing on instrumentation that spans length scales of interest to complex fluids: total scattering diffraction to small-angle scattering to ultra-small-angle scattering/spin-echo small-angle neutron scattering. We will also discuss sample environments that can be used alongside these. In the second part, it will be explained how these data are quantitatively analysed to give information about the structure and composition of materials. Finally, participants will get the opportunity to test their skills in analysising scattering data by performing simple modelling of real data themselves.