NEUTRON BACKSCATTERING ON VIBRATING SILICON-CRYSTALS - EXPERIMENTAL RESULTS ON THE NEUTRON BACKSCATTERING SPECTROMETER IN10

Neutron backscattering on vibrating silicon crystals has been measured in transmission geometry on the backscattering spectrometer IN10 at the Institute Laue-Langevin (ILL). The crystals were excited into longitudinal mechanical resonance vibrations by LiNbO3 transducers glued to the crystal surface. The transmitted intensity of the 111 Bragg reflection was measured as a function of the deformation amplitude at vibration frequencies from 2.5 MHz to 30 MHz. By vibrating the initially perfect silicon crystal, an increase in DELTAE/E of the diffracted profile was achieved, accompanied by an increase of the backreflected intensity. The width of the reflection and the resolution is a linear function of the ultrasonic strain over a wide range of excitation strengths. DELTAE/E can be easily tuned in a reproducible way by varying the voltage on the piezoelectric transducer. For the highest excited ultrasonic strain an increase of the backscattered intensity of about a factor of 50 is observed. Sound wave amplitudes can be determined from the measured width in DELTAE/E of the transmission curves. The obtained results are relevant for the design and operation of intensity-to-resolution tunable monochromators for high resolution instruments.