New tools at ISIS

OSIRIS The OSIRIS spectrometer, a new instrument at the ISIS Facility at the CLRC Rutherford Appleton Lab, was inaugurated on Oct.6. The OSIRIS will provide users with the powerful combination of a spectrometer and a diffractometer for measurement of structure and physical properties of a wide range of materials including electro-active polymers, energy storage systems and magnetic materials. The instrument combines high resolution at long d-spacing coupled with the highest count rate available today. The OSIRIS Project is an international collaboration involving Spain, Sweden, Switzerland, India, Italy, and two UK funding bodies, the Higher Education Funding Council (HEFCE) and the Engineering and Physical Sciences Research Council (EPSRC). More information is available at www.isis.rl.ac.uk/crystalanalysers/osiris/. David Martin

GEM The new General Materials diffractometer (GEM) at the ISIS neutron source was constructed by the Collaborative Research Group (CRG) headed by P. Day of the Royal Inst., and funded by EPSRC, the RIKEN lab. in Japan and the Higher Education Funding Council for England (HEFCE) through the Joint Research Equipment Initiative (JREI). The performance of this high flux high resolution diffractometer in its initial year has been impressive, allowing rapid data collections (under a minute) and permitting the study of small samples (3 mg). Details at www.isis.rl.ac.uk/disordered/gem/gem_home.htm. C. Wilson