This summer, we attended the 2016 Croucher Summer Course on Neutron Scattering held at the City University of Hong Kong. The China Spallation Neutron Source in Dongguan will be open to user in 2018. This course aims at training potential users for this newly built facility. Different from X-rays, neutrons interact only with the nucleus of materials, giving it excellent sensitivity to light atoms as well as isotopes. Besides, it also interacts with magnetic field due to its own spin, which can be used to probe magnetic structure and electron spin fluctuation. 14 experts in the field and about 40 students from all over the world came and we had a very fruitful experience in lectures, group projects and interesting discussion with fellow students and teachers. We learnt the principles behind different techniques like small angle scattering, reflectometry, inelastic scattering. In particular, we joined the small tutorial on how to extract local atomic distribution from wide angle scattering data. We also won the Honorable Mentions award in the group presentation competitions. We hope that with this experience we could broaden our research to more various types of special characterization techniques.
– reported by Tsz-Ki and Minchao