First Data Acquired on the EQ-SANS Diffractometer at the Spallation Neutron Source

The measurement of the conformation of a Generation-8 Polyamidoamine dendrimer is reported as an initial experiment using the Extended Q-range Small Angle Neutron Scattering (EQ-SANS) diffractometer at the Spallation Neutron Source at Oak Ridge National Laboratory (ORNL). The conformation parameters (radius of gyration, thickness of the soft shell etc.) are extracted by model fitting. The results are compared with data collected at the General-Purpose Small Angle Neutron Scattering at the High Flux Isotopic Reactor at ORNL. The comparison shows that the EQ-SANS diffractometer has comparable data statistics and Q resolution with shorter counting time over the measured Q-range.