Structural analysis of diamond mosaic crystals for neutron monochromators using synchrotron radiation

The beams extracted from thermal neutron sources such as nuclear reactors are monochromatised by Bragg diffraction using imperfect single crystals with an angular mosaic spread of typically 0.2-0.8 degrees. For neutron wavelengths below 1.5 angstrom, the highest reflectivity of all crystalline materials is expected for diamond. Nowadays diamond single crystals with an appropriate mosaic spread exceeding a thickness of 1 mm can be grown by heteroepitaxy on an Ir/yttria-stabilised zirconia bilayer deposited on a Si(001) single crystal. To explain the observed neutron reflectivity being below the theoretically expected value, we have studied the spatial distribution of the mosaic structure of two crystals by high resolution X-ray diffraction using a laboratory X-ray source and synchrotron radiation. The first sample (A) showed a uniform mosaic spread of 0.18 degrees +/- 0.02 degrees across the 1 cm wide sample. The peak shift of the X-ray rocking curves of 0.08 degrees indicated a weak curvature of the crystal lattice. The measured absolute neutron peak reflectivity of 34% corresponded to 90% of the value predicted by theory. The peak width of the neutron rocking curve for the second sample (B) was twice as big, but here the peak reflectivity of 13% corresponded to only half of the theoretical value. This unfavourable behaviour could be assigned to a substantial spatial variation of the mosaic spread deduced from the synchrotron X-ray studies. X-ray diffraction with high spatial resolution indicated a mosaic block size below 50 pm for sample A. This was consistent with chemical etching experiments on the surface of a comparable sample which showed both randomly distributed dislocations and others that are arranged in boundaries of several 10 mu m large domains. (C) 2013 Elsevier B.V. All rights reserved.