W0192

The Single Crystal Diffractometer Upgrade at the IPNS. John A, Cowan¹, Arthur J. Schultz¹, Martha Miller¹, Patrick De Lurgio², John Hammond¹, Rodney Porter¹, Peter F. Peterson¹, Dennis Mikkelson³ and Ruth Mikkelson³, ¹Intense Pulsed Neutron Source and ²Electronics and Computing Technologies, Argonne National Laboratory, Argonne, IL 60439, ³Dept. of Mathematics and Computing Science, Univ. of Wisconsin-Stout, Menomonie, WI 54751.

For over two decades the single crystal diffractometer at the Intense Pulsed Neutron Source has been a reliable and productive instrument. Recently S.C.D. has been the beneficiary of a thorough upgrade, receiving a new detector, new electronics, new computers and new control and data-processing software.

The new detector, which works on the same principal as the original, is smaller and has higher spatial resolution. The design enables the addition of more detectors, the second of which is scheduled to arrive in April to allow faster data collections on smaller crystals. The upgrade in hardware was accompanied by a renovation of the software, a new graphical interface to control the diffractometer and customised data-visualization and analysis is available in the graphical program ISAW. Preliminary tests show a marked improvement in performance.

A description of the upgrade will be presented along with the results of the tests, comparisons with the old detector and the first new results.

Work at Argonne supported by the U.S. DOE, Basic Energy Sciences--Materials Sciences, under Contract W-31-109-ENG-38.