Neutron Scattering in Materials Sciences

At the 1989 MRS Fall Meeting the present guest editors and J.D. Jorgensen chaired a symposium on “Neutron Scattering for Materials Science.” Approximately 80 papers were presented, covering a great variety of topics which joined members of the materials science and neutron scattering communities. Because of that symposium's success, it was decided to bring the topic of Neutron Scattering to the wider attention of the materials community through this special issue of the MRS BULLETIN.Our purpose is twofold. First, neutrons have increasingly come to play a crucial role, both here and especially in Europe, in our understanding of the structure and properties of materials. Through the manipulation of materials (radiation-induced effects, transmutation doping of semiconductors), nondestructive materials testing (residual stress measurements on industrial-sized objects, depth profiling of ion-implanted semiconductors) and structural and dynamical studies, academic, government, and industrial scientists and engineers are coming to recognize the broad utility of neutron methods. We would like to highlight some of the advances in this field for MRS BULLETIN readers.Second, neutron scattering presents an excellent example of the contribution of our large research facilities to the solution of both basic and applied problems in materials science. Without the major neutron scattering centers we would be severely limited in the scope of our materials activities (no knowledge of magnetic structures and only primitive insight into polymer structures, for example).