Phase-sensitive small-angle neutron scattering experiment

In the work reported herein, we investigate the practicality of a recently introduced variant of a general phase-sensitive method in small-angle neutron scattering that attempts to address the loss of phase-information as well as the orientational averaging simultaneously-through the use of reference structures in conjunction with finite element analysis. In particular, one possible physical realization of this approach is to employ polarized beams together with a magnetic reference connected to the sample object. We report on a first such practical implementation by successfully recovering the structure of a core-shell nanoparticle system.