Vertical Neutron Beam Focusing With Bent Mosaic Crystals

We report on the performance of bent mosaic crystals when used as a vertical focusing neutron monochromator. High-quality Cu(200) and Ge(335) mosaic crystals with a controlled curvature have been successfully produced at the ILL using plastic deformation at high temperature. As expected from simple geometrical considerations, they exhibit excellent properties for focusing a neutron beam vertically when examined on a high-resolution diffractometer installed on an m = 1 thermal neutron guide. Both Cu(200) and Ge(335) curved crystals allow a significant reduction of the focal image size at the sample position compared with a flat crystal with the same defect concentration. As a result, significant gain factors of 6 to 7 in intensity were obtained by replacing a flat crystal of 30 mm with a bent crystal.