At the end of 2024, after 40 years of operation, HRPD will be going offline for three years to carry out a comprehensive upgrade. The current instrument will be dismantled and the R69 building demolished in early 2025, allowing for the erection of a brand new building, R132, ready for installation of the new HRPD instrument. We expect to commission the new instrument and welcome scientific users back to HRPD in early 2028.
HRPD will not be accepting new beamtime proposals of any kind between now and October 2027.
We aim to support our community and reach out to potential new HRPD users during out shutdown, To this end we will be holding a workshop in 2026 and have a number of other activities planned.
Follow this link to learn more about our upgrade plans.
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HRPD is situated ~ 96 m from the ISIS first target (TS-1) at the end of a supermirror neutron guide. This long primary flight path allows us to achieve a near
Q-independent Δd/d ≈ 8x10−4 in backscattering geometry, making HRPD one of the highest-resolution neutron powder diffractometers in the world. This provides the ability to measure subtle changes in lattice parameters or peak splitting to very high precision and to observe subtle structural distortions, for example during phase transitions. The instrument's capacity to resolve closely-spaced peaks at short
d-spacings makes HRPD an ideal tool for structure solution from powder data.
HRPD was constructed on beamline S8 on TS-1 (110 K methane moderator) as part of the “Day 1" instrument suite at ISIS in the mid-1980s. A number of upgrades to the detectors have subsequently been made, including replacement of the original Li-glass scintillation detectors in the backscattering bank with ZnS-based modules, the installation of a low-angle bank comprising 72 half-inch
3He tubes and, in 1999, the enhancement of the 90o bank funded by an EPSRC Instrument Development Call. In 2005, a bid to the CLRC Facility Development scheme provided funding of around £1.2M to replace the original neutron guide with a new supermirror guide, giving gains in flux at the sample of ~10x at wavelengths from 1 – 4 Å, and several times higher at shorter wavelengths, albeit at the expense of increased beam divergence.
Science Areas
- High resolution powder diffraction studies across a range of scientific areas, including inorganic and organic chemistry, physics, materials science, Earth & planetary science and engineering.
- Accurate structure refinement of complex materials with large unit cells and/or low symmetry (up to 2500 Å3).
- High precision refinement of lattice parameters.
- Characterisation of subtle and complex line-broadening phenomena.
- Studies of structural and magnetic phase transitions.
- Ab initio structure solution from powder data.
For further information about running an experiment on HRPD, contact Dr Dominic Fortes or Dr Christopher Howard
Contact information for HRPD instrument
Location and contact information for the HRPD beamline
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Access |
Restricted |
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Building |
R69 - HRPD |
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Telephone |
01235 445579
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