PELICAN –a Time of Flight Cold Neutron Spectrometer - Capabilities and Scientific Outcomes

The time-of-flight direct-geometry neutron spectrometer, Pelican, has been in user program since 2014 at the OPAL research reactor, at the Australian Nuclear Science and Technology Organisation (ANSTO). The Pelican instrument was designed to meet the diverse requirements of the Australian scientific community from physics, chemistry, material science, to biology. A wide range of research fields is covered. These include crystal-field excitations, phonon densities of states, magnetic excitations for various multifunctional materials including high Tc superconductors, novel magnetic, thermoelectric, ferroelectric and piezoelectric materials; molecular dynamics in hydrogen-bonded and storage materials, catalytic materials, cements, soils and rocks; and water dynamics in proteins and ion diffusion in membranes. Polarized neutrons and polarisation analysis option makes the full use of the neutron spin to study magnetism and to separate the coherent and incoherent scatterings.In this presentation, the performance and capabilities of the instrument will be demonstrated with several systems studied using quasi-elastic and inelastic neutron scatterings. These include water dynamics around amino acids, crystal field excitations in magnetic molecular crystals, low energy magnetic excitations in spin frustrated magnet, oxygen diffusion in solid oxide conductors and phonon density of states in thermoelectric materials.