IBARAKI materials design diffractometer (iMATERIA)—Versatile neutron diffractometer at J-PARC

Ibaraki prefecture, the local government of the area for J-PARC site, was decided to build a versatile neutron diffractometer (IBARAKI Materials Design Diffractometer, iMATERIA) to promote an industrial application for neutron beam in J-PARC. iMATERIA is planned to be a high throughput diffractometer so that materials engineers and scientists can use it like the chemical analytical instruments in their materials development process. It covers in d range 0.18<d (Å)<5 with Δd/d=0.16% at high resolution bank, and covers 5<d (Å)<800 with gradually changing resolution at three detector bank (90°, low angle and small angle). Typical measuring time to obtain a ‘Rietveld-quality’ data is several minutes with the sample size of laboratory X-ray diffractometer. To promote industrial application, a utilization system for this diffractometer is required. We will establish a support system for both academic and industrial users who are willing to use neutron but have not been familiar with neutron diffraction. The analysis software is also very important for powder diffraction, we will also prepare a software package consisting of combination of several powder-diffraction software, structural databases and visualization. The construction of iMATERIA will be completed in the end of April 2008, as one of day-one instruments for J-PARC.