Bragg Institute News 2007
31 December 2007
In the year 2007, the Institute published a total of 99 refereed journal articles. In addition, our staff gave a total of 25 invited talks at major national and international conferences in Asia, Europe, America and Australia.
22 December 2007
ANSTO today lodged its application with ARPANSA, the independent safety regulator, seeking approval to modify the reactor fuel design and to use the modified fuel design to restart operation of the OPAL reactor. For more detail see ANSTO's news archive.
12 December 2007
The spare 1m2 detector for the QUOKKA small-angle neutron scattering instrument arrived at ANSTO today. As part of our risk-management strategy for this important instrument we had ordered both a spare detector and a spare velocity selector, the latter having already arrived in September 2007.
10 December 2007
The KOALA Quasi-Laue Diffractometer arrived back at ANSTO today from Grenoble, after repair and remanufacturing by the manufacturer, Maatel.
An image of the blue Cerenkov radiation from the OPAL reactor has also featured in this year's New Scientist magazine calendar.
4 December 2007
Our novel 5-T all high-Tc superconducting magnet for small-angle neutron scattering and reflectometry arrived from New Zealand today. This project has been a collaboration with Industrial Research Limited and HTS-110, with funding split roughly evenly between the 3 partners. It has attracted some media attention in New Zealand.
29 November - 3 December 2007
Over the last few days we hosted our first neutron school on the OPAL neutron-beam instruments:
ANSTO/AINSE Neutron School on Diffraction in Collaboration with IAEA. Some 30 PhD students and postdocs, selected from 55 applications, participated. The first half of the school consisted of lecture sessions and posters in which the participants presented their own projects and where they considered neutron scattering could be advantageous. The participants found the hands-on experience on the powder-diffraction instruments and the strain scanner very beneficial, although we had no neutrons to show the real performance. However, we used previously collected data for data analysis: each group presented their results on the last day of the school.
28-29 November 2007
A Workshop has been held at Lucas Heights, on "Polarised Neutron Scattering at ANSTO". 35 participants attended, from 8 Australian and 2 overseas universities, 2 ANSTO Institutes, and 3 leading overseas neutron laboratories. All participants had the opportunity to give their vision for the scientific opportunities with polarized neutron beams and polarization analysis, and interest covered a wide range of subjects, including spin valves, high-te
mperature superconductors, disordered magnetic systems and the separation of incoherent from coherent scattering in a range of non-magnetic systems. Invited talks were given highlighting both the latest science results and technical aspects (Tom Gentile, NIST, USA; Thomas Keller, MPI-Stuttgart, Germany; and Ken Andersen, ILL, France). There was consensus that there is a compelling case for polarisation analysis on all three of our inelastic-scattering instruments, and for diffraction using the WOMBAT high-entensity powder diffractometer. For most of these applications, polarised 3He is the preferred technology. The workshop report will be available shortly. view larger image
15-16 November 2007
A Workshop has been held at Lucas Heights, on "Pushing Small-Angle Neutron Scattering at OPAL to Smaller-Q". 39 participants attended, from 9 Australian Universities, CSIRO, Industry, the Australian Synchrotron, 3 ANSTO Institutes, and 3 leading overseas neutron laboratories. All participants had the opportunity to give their vision for work using USANS in 2010 and beyond, and interest covered a wide range of subjects from polymer science and biology, to cement, nanocomposites, various industrial applications, magnetic nanoparticles and and even wine and milk.
Invited talks were given on the subjects of "Science we can do at Lower Q" (John Barker, NIST, USA, Markus Strobl, HMI, Germany and Wim Bouwman, TU Delft, The Netherlands), followed up with talks on "Technical Aspects" by the same speakers, see report for more details. view larger image
31 October 2007
Factory acceptance testing of our KOALA Quasi-Laue Diffractometer has taken place in Grenoble, after repair and remanufacturing by the manufacturer, Maatel. The instrument will be now undergo a few further modifications during November, prior to its return to the Bragg Institute in early January 2008.
24 October 2007
ANSTO announced today that we now expect the OPAL reactor to be operating again in the first few weeks of 2008.
Analysis and testing of fuel assemblies, following the fuel plate movements recently discovered in the OPAL reactor are continuing and should be completed in early November. A submission seeking approval from the independent nuclear regulator ARPANSA, to restart the reactor is being prepared. The submission will detail the reason for the fuel plate movements, fuel design changes to prevent a recurrence, and tests undertaken to validate the design. ANSTO anticipates that the necessary adjustments will be completed and OPAL will be operational in the first few weeks of 2008.
Detailed examination and removal of the fuel assemblies, including high resolution video footage of the fuel at the bottom of the 13-metre deep reactor pool, has been painstaking and required two approvals from ARPANSA. The process of removing the fuel, running the tests and seeking approvals has been time consuming but necessary. The shutdown has also enabled ANSTO to carry out repairs to the reflector vessel which contains heavy water and surrounds the reactor core. That work has been successfully completed.
A set of frequently asked questions (and answers) have also been posted on the web.
19 October 2007
The first research publication using neutron-diffraction data taken at OPAL has been accepted for publication as J. Solid State Chem. 180, 3535-3544 (2007); The results are from our ECHIDNA high-resolution powder diffractometer. The full title is "Transitions between P21, P63, and P6322 modifications of SrAl2O4 by in-situ high-temperature X-ray and neutron diffraction", by Maxim Avdeev, Sergey Yakovlev, Aleksey A Yaremchenko and Vladislav V Kharton, from Bragg Institute and University of Aveiro in Portugal.
There was also an inaugural meeting at ANSTO of the group writing a Decadal Plan for Neutron Scattering. This is taking place under the auspices of the National Committee for Crystallography of the Australian Academy of Sciences, under the chair of Prof. Peter Colman (Walter and Eliza Hall Institute). All major stakeholders, including AINSE, ANBUG and industry were represented. This will supersede the draft Decadal Plan produced in 2006.
One of our staff, Dr. Elliot Gilbert, has been elected to Fellowship of the Royal Society of Arts in London.
8 October 2007
Our novel rapid heat quench cell, a sample environment primarily for small-angle scattering, which has completed lab trials between 150 and 450K with peak heating rates of 16 Ks-1 and peak cooling rates of 9 Ks-1, has been successfully tested using neutrons at the IPNS facility in the United States on the SASI instrument to study phase separation in paraffin blends.
4 October 2007
The fourth edition of the quarterly newsletter Bragg Peaks (PDF 329 kB) featuring news on the OPAL reactor, our instruments, people and science was issued today.
The Institute was also represented in Adelaide today at the launch of "William and Lawrence Bragg, Father and Son - The Most Extraordinary Collaboration in Science" a new book on W. H. and W. L. Bragg, after whom the Institute is named. The book has been written by Dr. John Jenkin of La Trobe University.
A high-performance computing cluster was also delivered today. When testing of the system is complete, it will be connected to the ANSTO's Science Network and will used by ANSTO's research institutes and their users/customers. The system is based on the SGI XE product line These machines were benchmarked by SGI using programs that ANSTO will be running on these machines, including VASP (The Vienna Ab-initio Simulation Package). Before too long, the Monte-Carlo simulation package McStas and other programs will be installed on the cluster to support research and instrument simulation at the Bragg Institute.
27 September 2007
Today we ran a workshop on Users' Needs for the National Deuteration Facility, with approximately 30 attendees from universities around Australia.
21 September 2007
One of our postdocs, Andrew Whitten, has been featured in a profile (including video) by ABC Online.
The spare velocity selector for the QUOKKA small-angle neutron scattering instrument has also been shipped to ANSTO. As part of our risk-management strategy for this important instrument we had ordered both a spare velocity selector and a spare 1m2 detector.
6 September 2007
Today, for the first time we successfully received the first electronic data from OPAL, via the specially installed data diode. When in routine operation, this will allow on-line logging at the instruments of key parameters like reactor power, cold-neutron source temperature, shutter status and so on.
3 September 2007
In a press release today, ANSTO announced that the shutdown of the OPAL reactor will now extend longer than previously anticipated. For more details, please see the press release
31 August 2007
Today, for the first time, we measured a specular-reflectivity profile from an air-liquid interface (see right or view a larger image) on our X-ray reflectometer. We had previously been limited to air-solid interfaces. The PLATYPUS neutron reflectometer will also be able to handle solid-liquid and solid-solid interfaces.
22 August 2007
The first research publication using neutron-diffraction data taken at OPAL was submitted for publication today.
Unfortunately, our small-angle x-ray scattering instrument has suffered a major breakdown, in its power supply. We are currently in negotiations with the manufacturer with regards to the required course of action. As a result, we anticipate that the machine will be unavailable for use until the start of 2008.
2 August 2007
Work by one of our postdocs, Catherine Kealley, has won 3rd place for the 2007 George F. Stewart IFT International Research Paper Competition, at the recent Institute of Food Technologists Conference held in Chicago between 29th July and 2nd August 2007. The full reference to this collaborative work involving CSIRO, U. of Queensland and ANSTO, is "Structural Characterization of Native Soy Protein in the Dry State", by C.S. Kealley, M.K. Rout, I.A.M. Appelqvist, E. Strounina, A.K. Whittaker, M.J. Gidley and E.P. Gilbert.
31 July 2007
Today Institute Head Rob Robinson met up with Prof. Stephen Bragg and Lady Lucy Adrian (see right image or view larger image), the son and niece respectively of Lawrence Bragg, after whom the Institute is named. The occasion was a dinner at Churchill College in Cambridge, England.
11 July 2007
The Bragg Institute was recertified under ISO 9001:2000 today
22 June 2007
Today ANSTO and AINSE also hosted a Workshop on "Neutrons for the Hydrogen Economy". 41 Participants attended from 10 
Australian universities, CSIRO, 2 ANSTO Institutes and 2 overseas universities (see image, right or view a larger image). The workshop commenced with overviews by Evan Gray (National Hydrogen Materials Alliance) and Sukhvinder Badwal (CSIRO Energy Technology), and included talks on "Chemisorbed Hydrogen" by Craig Jensen (U. of Hawaii) and "Physisorbed Hydrogen" by Jeff Long (U. of California, Berkeley), see report for more details.
One of our Post docs, Catherine Kealley, has won first prize for the best poster at the 14th Gums and Stabilisers for the Food Industry Conference, which was held 18th to 22nd June 2007 at Wrexham in the UK. The work is entitled " Water-Induced Conformational Changes in Solid-State Soy Glycinin".
18 June 2007
The third of our new OPAL instruments, the KOWARI strain scanner (left), took its first diffraction pattern today (right), as part of the commissioning process.
Another new postdoctoral fellow joined us this week Dr Anna Sokolova (formerly of the Institute of Crystallography, Moscow, Russia), to work within our Food Science Project.
13 June 2007
Work by two Bragg Institute members, Andrew Whitten and Jill Trewhella, is featured on the cover of the June 2007 edition of Structure. The full reference to the research article is D. Comoletti et al., "Synaptic Arrangement of the Neuroligin/-Neurexin Complex Revealed by X-Ray and Neutron Scattering", Structure 15, 693-705 (2007).
9-10 June 2007
Two hundred researchers descended on the beautiful mountain village of Sun-Moon Lake in Central Taiwan, for an International Workshop on Neutron Scattering. Seven Bragg Institute staff participated actively in the meeting, along with four leading experts from other leading neutron laboartories around the world. The workshop was split into 2 parts with the first day on hard-matter and magnetism and the second on soft-matter and biology, and lectures by Profs. Tsang-Lan Lin, Chih-Hua Lee, Hsin-Lung Chen and Lieh-Jeng Chang (all from National Tsing-Hua University), Shi-Jung Bai (from National Sun Yat Sen University), Chao-Hung Du (from Tamkang University) and Shir-Ly Huang and Wen-Hsien Li (National Central University). The context was the investment by the National Science Council of Taiwan in a new high-performance cold-neutron 3-Axis Spectrometer (SIKA) at the new OPAL reactor in Sydney Australia, and the National Science Council's support for a strong user program across all the instruments at OPAL. In addition to speakers from ANSTO, there were lectures on Multiferroics, 2-D antiferromagnets, Quantum Magnets, and a range of other topics in condensed-matter physics by Jeff Lynn (NIST), Niels Christensen (SINQ), Kazu Kakurai (JAEA) and Jiri Kulda (ILL).
All in all, over 254 had registered for the meeting, but the accommodation was limited to 200 predominantly from Taiwan. Nevertheless, 47 different groups from around Taiwan attended, covering fields as diverse as physics, mechanical engineering, earth sciences, opto-electronics, life-sciences, chemical engineering, chemistry and materials science.
The main meeting was followed up by a smaller more-focussed workshop on 11-12 June to determine the nature of the secondary spectrometer for SIKA, which is scheduled to commence operation in 2009.
30-31 May 2007
The Bragg Institute Program Advisory Committee met for the first time to assess the proposals subm
itted for the WOMBAT and ECHIDNA powder diffractometers. A total of 81 proposals had been submitted for 357 beam days, spread over the 2 instruments. Letters to applicants on decision of beam-time allocations were sent out to the principal investigator. However, beam-time scheduling cannot take place until: (1) there is a published operating schedule for the OPAL reactor itself; and (2) we have operating licences for ECHIDNA and WOMBAT, from our regulator, ARPANSA. We have chosen to allocate 60 days of beam time per instrument. This corresponds to a subscription rate of ~3x.
25 May 2007
CSIRO Petroleum and ANSTO today signed a research agreement to study the nucleation of gas hydrates using the neutron-scattering facilities at OPAL. This work is under the umbrella of CSIRO's "Wealth from the Oceans" Flagship Program.
27 April 2007
The first proposal round for neutron-beam experiments at OPAL closed today, for beam time on the ECHIDNA and WOMBAT powder diffractometers. A total of 81 beam-time proposals from Australia and overseas, for a total of 353 beam days spread over the 2 instruments have been requested.
Another experienced scientist joined us this week: Dr James Hester (formerly a Bragg Institute employee at the Australian Synchrotron Research Program's beamline at the Photon Factory in Japan), as an instrument scientist for the ECHIDNA high-resolution powder diffractometer. James brings a wealth of experience from the BIGDIFF X-ray powder diffractometer, along with years of successful experience serving the Australian scientific community from Japan.
23 April 2007
A complete Rietveld refinement of alumina calibration data has now been successfully performed on the second of our powder diffractometers (see right), the WOMBAT powder diffractometer. The refinement shown above is with =2.41A.
20 April 2007
Today the Prime Minister of Australia, The Hon. John Howard MP, formally opened the new OPAL research reactor.
The Australian Prime Minister in the OPAL guide hall
At the same ceremony, Prof. Werner Burkart, Deputy Director-General of the International Atomic Energy Agency (IAEA), announced that ANSTO has been made an IAEA Collaborating Centre for Neutron Scattering Applications.
12-13 April 2007
The second edition of the quarterly newsletter Bragg Peaks (PDF 310 kB), featuring news on the OPAL reactor, our instruments, people and science was also issued today.
The Bragg Institute Advisory Committee, which gives strategic advice to the Institute, also met today. Two new members joined the panel for the first time: Prof. Bill Stirling (Director-General of the European Synchrotron Radiation Facility, Grenoble, France) and Prof. Lyndon Edwards (the new Head of ANSTO's Institute for Materials & Engineering Science). The meeting was also a sad farewell to Prof. Don Napper, who has chaired the panel since the Institute's formation in 2002, to Prof. Barry Muddle (Monash University) and Prof. Alan Leadbetter (University of Exeter, UK), both of whom have also been advising us from the beginning.
4 April 2007
The liquid-deuterium cold-neutron source was operated at the OPAL reactor's design power of 20MW for the first time today.
Another new postdoctoral fellow joined us this week: Dr Mogens Christensen (formerly of University of Aarhus, Denmark), to work on "Chemical Crystallography".
30 March 2007
Today we called for proposals on our first 2 instruments at OPAL: the ECHIDNA and WOMBAT powder diffractometers. The deadline is 27 April 2007. Subject to getting operating licences from our regulator (ARPANSA), and continued progress in commissioning the reactor itself, we hope to schedule the first user experiments on these 2 instruments in September 2007. The beam time application formis available online, as is the formal formal call for proposals.
20 March 2007
The Australian Academy of Science's Nova web page now features an article "Probing past and future materials with neutrons", with features on Ned Kelly's armour, the difference between X-ray and neutron scattering, the Bragg Institute and the OPAL Reactor. The article is sponsored by the ARC's Molecular and Materials Structure Network, in which Bragg Institute staff are participants.
Another new postdoctoral fellow joined us this week Dr Milen Gateshki (formerly of Central Michigan University, USA), to work on "Mineralogy at High Temperatures and Pressures".
2 March 2007
Rietveld refinements of alumina calibration data have now been successfully performed on both the ECHIDNA and WOMBAT powder diffractometers. The refinement shown above is from the ECHIDNA high-resolution powder diffractometer operating at l=1.54.
27 February 2007
The second of our new OPAL instruments, the WOMBAT high-intensity powder diffractometer, took its first diffraction pattern (see image above) today, as part of the commissioning process. These data were from a standard MgO calibration sample, and low Bragg angles are to the right of the image.
19 February 2007
Our regulator ARPANSA today awarded ANSTO a licence to "hot-commission" the next three neutron-beam instruments at the OPAL Research Reactor: the KOWARI Strain Scanner, the PLATYPUS Reflectometer, and the QUOKKA Small-Angle Neutron Scattering Spectrometer. This brings the total of instrument commissioning licences to six.
13 February 2007
Today we hosted a visit to the Bragg Institute by Prof Tony Kelly FRS, the last of Lawrence Bragg's research students in metals.
5 February 2007
2 new postdoctoral fellows joined us this week: Dr Roland Bircher
(formerly of the University of Bern, Switzerland) and Dr Sergey Yakovlev (formerly of University of Aveiro, Portugal), to work on "Molecular Magnets" and the "Geometry of Distorted Perovskites" respectively.1-2 February 2007
The Beam Instruments Advisory Group met for the thirteenth and final time at Lucas Heights and reviewed progress on the nine initial instruments for OPAL, along with the IT and Electrical Engineering infrastructure for instrument suite. The committee is shown (above) in front of the newly installed detector for the WOMBAT high-intensity powder diffractometer. From left to right: Gerald Roach, Ian Gentle, John Dunlop, Kath Smith, Dan Neumann, Tony Klein (chair), Stewart Campbell, Sow-Hsin Chen and Michihiro Furusaka.
30 January 2007
The HIFAR Reactor operated for the last time today. At 10.25 a.m., the Hon. Julie Bishop MP, Minister for Education, Science and Training, shown above with ANSTO Executive Director Ian Smith, initiated the final shutdown. HIFAR originally went critical on Australia Day 1958 and was officially opened on 18 April 1958 by the then Prime Minister, Robert Menzies.
The OPAL reactor has now operated for 
the equivalent of 26 days at full power after reaching nominal full power (20 MW) on the 3 of November 2006. The first fuel change is scheduled for early February.
Today, we issued the first edition of the quarterly newsletter Bragg Peaks (PDF 305 kB), featuring news on the OPAL reactor, our instruments, people and science.
Work by our researchers has also been featured in the January edition of magazine What's New in Food Technology and Manufacturing. The article "Food Science goes Nuclear" features work done on starch and the processing of proteins, as part of ANSTO's Food Science Project. The full reference to the article is What's New in Food Technology & Manufacturing 14(6), 69-70 (Jan/Feb 2007).
One of our graduate students, John Daniels (Monash University) has been awarded this year's AINSE Gold Medal, for his research on "Relaxation and Microstructural Studies in Ferroelectrics". Much of John's work was done with neutrons at the Bragg Institute under the supervision of Andrew Studer and Mark Hagen.
Also this week, another eminent neutron scatterer, Prof. Lyndon Edwards formerly of the Open University in the UK, joined ANSTO in a leadership role, as head of ANSTO's Institute for Materials & Engineering Science.
22 January 2007
Dr. Ron Nelson, a very experienced IT expert and operations manager formerly at the Los Alamos Neutron Science Centre in the USA, joined us today to strengthen our IT, Data-Acquisition, Detector and Data-Analysis team.
15 January 2007
A new staff member, Dr. Anne Rich, joined us this week from University of Sydney to help us with operations of our SAXS instrument.
In addition, Dr. Mark Konnecke (from the Swiss Spallation Neutron Source SINQ, near Zurich, Switzerland) is with us for 3 weeks, working on the SICS control system for the neutron-beam instruments at OPAL. Mark is the author of SICS.
1 January 2007
Work by one of our researchers, Vanessa Peterson, has been featured in the magazine Chemical & Engineering News. Vanessa's work involves neutron diffraction on hydrogen storage by Metal-Organic Frameworks or MOFs, which are the first materials to meet the US Department of Energy's targets for lightweight hydrogen-storage materials for transportation applications. The full reference to the original work is V. K. Peterson et al., Neutron powder diffraction study of D2 sorption in Cu3(1,3,5-benzenetricarboxylate)2, Journal of the American Chemical Society 128, 15578-15579 (2006).