2014 Volume 56 Issue 5 Pages 301-306
Even though the single crystal neutron diffraction technique is one of the most powerful methods to observe hydrogen atoms in molecular crystals, the necessity of a large single crystal has been a serious bottle-neck of this technique. Recently, author and co-workers constructed a new TOF-Laue single crystal neutron diffractometer, SENJU, at J-PARC/MLF. Neutron structure analysis of a 0.1 mm3 taurine single crystal by using SENJU showed that single crystal neutron structure analysis of a sub-millimeter size molecular crystal is feasible in realistic beam-time. In addition, diffraction measurement of a small crystal with 4 K cryostat and other sample environment devices at SENJU will make several types of “theoretically possible” experiments in the field of crystal chemistry, such as observation of metastable species or visualization of spin electron density by neutron diffraction, “practically possible”.
