Dear all,
Recently, one of my friends ask me, coz he is neutron stranger, and his question is about one of his project in which they are studying the nanometer-sized domain effect on Nickel ferrite, NiFe2O4, different from conventional formula and occupancy which are used to describe the stoichiometry and they found significant anomalous evolution with the different grain sizes. the exiting techniques, Mosbauer Spectrum and XRD analysis tell them quantitatively the changes of Fe partial occupancy, however, both the Mosbauser spectrum and XRD have no capability to study Nickel partial occupancy situation due to the nature of Mosbauer spectrum and closeness of atomic number. Recently they asked me the possibility of neutron diffraction, and since the they use the natural abundance Nickel and iron as the precursor of sample preparation, so unfortunately, the similarity of coherent scattering length between the Ni and Fe makes trouble again, and there is no good perspective for this kind of set-up, though there seems a isotope substitution solution which presumably makes a good contrast, however, for the moment, they didn't give priority to this idea. What I am looking for is if there is any solution to study the the compound with close neutron scattering length, I supposed to see, there is some clever method to solve this issue based on the tips of data analysis from neutron diffraction, or any others? Many thanks! Best Regards, Lingfei Zhang ********************************** Neutron Scattering Physics Group Institute for Materials Research Maxwell Building 111 University of Salford Salford, Greater Manchester United Kingdom M5 4WT Tel:0161 295 4633 Facsimile:0161 295 5147 Email:[EMAIL PROTECTED] **********************************
