Structural Studies of Hard and Soft Matter using a 36-meter Small-angle Neutron Scattering BATAN Spectrometer (SMARTer) in Serpong, Indonesia

A 36 meter small-angle neutron scattering (SANS) spectrometer in Serpong, Indonesia is the one of the largest SANS spectrometers nowadays in the Asia-Oceania region. The spectrometer has been revitalized, developed, and improved both on the instrumentation and experimental method, and then utilized for inter-laboratory comparison and basic research purposes. Liquid, gel, powder, solid-state thin film, metal plate and amorphous samples have been performed for structural and self-assembly mechanism studies. The morphological changes of micelles in micellar solutions were the most interesting research works in the last several years. Detailed structure studies on core-shell micelle were succeeded by applying a contrast variation method, i.e. H2O/D2O mixture solution. Diluted nanoparticle and ordered systems from solution, powder and solid-state samples which correspond to form and structure factors have been investigated. The fractals structures of disordered system from aggregation of ferrofluids nanoparticles and aerogels have been accomplished directly through a “power-law” scattering approximation. Magnetic structure from metal-alloys, showing anisotropic magnetic scattering structure properties up to 1 tesla of external magnetic field was also accomplished confirming the crystalline and magnetic domain sizes. Recently, most of experiments on biological materials were performed for investigating the structure and dynamics of protein and virus in solutions.