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 A multitude of day-to-day products have complex structures which are often explored with neutrons. The mechanics behind their property can be used for developing other complex fluids and soft materials within the manufacturing industry.
Today neutrons have contributed to the development of a large range of other products, such as plastics, cleaners. cosmetics and synthetic fibres for the textile industry.
In the future, the processing industry can be just as important, and chemical processes can be made more efficient and less hazardous to the environment.
Purification processes can be made more efficient. It can be easier to clean contaminated drinking water, a common problem in developing countries. It can be possible to wash contaminated soil without washing away the fertile substances from the soil. It can be feasible to find methods to melting down hazardous waste to separating out the toxic substances. Or gather valuable chemicals from other waste material.
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 A toothpaste tube is a technical wonder. Two different plastics have been welded together: one rigid plastic to make sure the cork can be screwed on, and one soft plastic to make sure the toothpaste can be squeezed out. This is as complicated as welding together two different metals.
Behind day-to-day products like packaging there are often high tech solutions. And neutrons is a good instrument to find the packaging solutions of tomorrow.
Neutrons can also make a contribution after old packaging have been discarded. If plastics is to be recycled, we need to understand what types of plastics can be melted down to be combined in useful blends. This require knowledge on molecular level.
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Neutrons can reflect the past, and shed light on since long forgotten techniques. They can force their way into archaeological materials like ceramics, coins and glass without destroying them or even leaving a trace.
Neutrons can tell about the substances that objects are made of and how they are manufactured. The materials are like fingerprints and can tell about how earlier societies built their culture.
Ceramic objects are important for dating objects, and neutrons can reveal what is hidden behind glazes and surfaces. The fingerprints of these objects give researchers the possibility to draw conclusions on, for example, mineral composition, how the object was made, and at what temperature it was burnt.
Cultural heritage is a relatively new field for neutron scientists, mainly due to the limitations of today’s neutron sources. |
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 How are medications received by the body? How do they work inside the body? Knowledge of how living cells function will probably be the most important source of future new medicines.
More efficient medications will be one of the possibilities created when scientists will be able to study enzymes and proteins in their natural environment and with greater precision. High-energy neutron experiments will also enable the study of systems and processes that change over time. Researchers will have a new powerful tool to study the properties and functions of proteins and cell membranes, and how they integrate with, for example, medicines.
If scientists can study the details of different proteins in the human body, they can more easily create medicines that match those proteins. Proteins are essential, since they act as receptors for the molecules of the medication. Therefore neutron experiments performed on those proteins and enzymes causing diseases like Alzheimer’s disease, can be important contributions to beak-through medicines.
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 Today, researchers are increasingly interested in how the properties of different materials change when the constituent elements are reduced in size. This opens new possibilities for tailoring materials to different needs.
In the future we will have materials with totally new physical properties. With neutrons it is possible to analyse how molecules arrange themselves spontaneously into larger units. This process can be useful both within pharmaceuticals and in the creation of tiny building blocks for sensors or computer chips. Researchers in nanotechnology are hoping to construct structures smaller than 100 nanometres – 1/10,000 of a millimetre – and assemble them into materials today unknown.
 With nano technology and neutrons it will be possible to construct new materials, create light-weight nano-composite materials and molecule-sized magnets.
The electronics of tomorrow will have circuit components built with nano technology. They will be so small, that we need neutrons to help us understand what is happening in the tightly packed and complex circuits. We need this knowledge for the laptop computers, video recorders and mobile communication networks of tomorrow. This is an excellent example of how small science can have a big potential!
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