ILL-CZ – website
Participation of the Czech Republic
Hosting institution: Charles University
ILL-CZ ensures the long-term membership of the Czech Republic in Institut Laue-Langevin (ILL) in Grenoble, which opens for the Czech research community extensive opportunities to perform unique experiments using top instruments installed in ILL as the most intense stationary neutron source in the world. The Czech membership in ILL provides access to ILL facilities and gives the possibility to perform neutron scattering experiments. There is about 40 unique instruments available for users in ILL, covering all fields of neutron scattering as diffraction, large scale structures investigation, dynamics studied by time-of-flight, high resolution and three-axis spectrometers or nuclear and neutron particle physics. The neutron scattering experiments are essential part of research in many areas of physics, materials science, chemistry or biochemistry. Such experiments provide indispensable microscopic information about the studied materials. The access to experimental infrastructure of ILL and related direct involvement in activities of international neutron research community is essential for the Czech neutron research community, which is steadily growing.
Future development
The list of available instruments does not change considerably in time, but the instruments itself are continuously significantly upgraded or replaced by completely new ones with the same focus. Excellent example represents the ThALES (Three Axis Instrument for Low Energy Spectrometry) instrument, which replaces an older spectrometer and which has been constructed and delivered by the Czech Republic in the form of an in-kind contribution. The Czech scientists actively participate on further development of the ThALES spectrometer.
Socio-economic impact
The experimental results achieved within the framework of the Czech membership in ILL can be directly utilized in commercial sector. It concerns microstructure of metals and alloys, glasses, ceramics or semiconductors, mechanical stress in industrial components, composites, metals, ceramics, environment and energy, applications in chemistry as phase changes in industrial products or catalysis. It is also important that the Czech membership in ILL entitles the Czech companies and research organisations to be considered as potential participants in tenders for ILL instrumentation. The construction of the ThALES instrument is one of crucial examples of cooperation of the research infrastructure with the commercial sector.
