Neutron diffraction or elastic neutron scattering is the application of neutron scattering to the determination of the atomic and/or magnetic structure of a material. A sample to be examined is placed
In 1949, Ernest Wollan and Clifford Shull conducted experiments using a double-crystal neutron spectrometer positioned on the southern side of the ORNL graphite reactor to collect data.
Neutron diffraction, used along with molecular simulations, revealed that an ion channel's voltage sensing domain (red, yellow, and blue molecule at center) perturbs the two-layered cell membrane that surrounds it (yellow surfaces), causing the membrane to thin slightly.
Ernest Omar Wollan was an American physicist who made major contributions in the fields of neutron scattering and health physics.
Hand-plotted rocking curves for Bragg scattering from single sodium chloride (salt) crystals at the X-10 reactor at Oak Ridge, obtained by Ernest O. Wollan and Lyle B. Borst in December 1944.