High temperature furnaces for small and large angle neutron scattering of disordered materials

Abstract

Two similar high temperature furnaces (up to 2 000 °C) have been developed for large angle and small angle neutron scattering (SANS) experiments respectively. They are vacuum furnaces with a thin tungsten foil heating element supplied by two tantalum leads, and shielded by thin tungsten foils maintained in a tantalum box. In a neutron beam, the furnaces produce a very low scattering level (without any Bragg peaks) due to the openings in the heating element, the shields and the tantalum box for the incident, unscattered beam and the scattered beam at low angles. Thus the furnace absorption correction is also much easier. A platinum thermocouple controls temperature, very high temperatures are measured optically. A vacuum chamber has been especially designed for SANS experiments with two windows in polished sapphire. The furnaces have been successfully used for the study of liquid alloys on the D4, D11 and D17 spectrometers at the ILL.