Ari Connerty-Singer – News Editor
aic5296@psu.edu

The Penn State Radiation Science and Engineering Center (RSEC) at University Park has been granted a cutting-edge addition to its research reactor facility in the form of a small-angle neutron scattering (SANS) device, donated to the University by Helmholtz Zentrum Berlin, a German research center for high-energy physics. The 32-meter, $9.8 million instrument makes RSEC’s Breazeale Nuclear Reactor the first and only research reactor owned by an American university to possess SANS capability.

The SANS equipment permits RSEC to observe the way in which various materials cause neutrons of very long wavelengths to scatter when they interact with material samples. This makes it possible for researchers in a wide range of scientific fields to analyze the structure and properties of materials on the nanometer scale when traditional methods such as X-ray observation are unable to probe the sample.

Neutron-based nanometer analysis has applications across the entire spectrum of physics, engineering, chemistry, and biology. In electronics engineering, such small scales determine the efficacy of superconductors and magnetic storage; in cellular biology, nanometer protein processes shape cell function; and the science of how microscopic material properties translate to large scales is a keystone aspect of the development of strong, high-performance materials such as superalloys and high-impact polymer plastics.

Helmholtz Zentrum Berlin oversaw the transfer of the SANS equipment to Penn State after the 2019 shutdown of BER II, the Berlin-based research reactor in which the device was previously housed. The sensitive instrumentation took nearly two years of disassembly, packing, and safety verification prior to its journey to University Park in a total of eight separate shipping containers. Installation at RSEC is currently underway, and will be used by departments across the University Park campus, as well as researchers and industries across the United States through the U.S. Department of Energy’s National Science User Facilities (NSUF) program.

“It is an exciting time for neutron science at Penn State,” said RSEC director and professor of nuclear engineering Kenan Ünlü. “New and improved facilities, including the installation of SANS, will open new frontiers for neutron science” at RSEC and the University at large.

Project manager Roland Steitz of Helmholtz Zentrum Berlin expressed the institute’s enthusiasm for the continued operation of the SANS instrument in a 2021 statement, bidding it “a bright and prosperous future at its new home”; and noted that research communities in Germany “are already awaiting the chances to come for joint projects.”