Thermography using energy-dependent neutron transmission imaging can non-invasively and non-destructively visualize a real-space distribution of interior temperatures of a material in a container. Previously, resonance absorption broadening analysis and Bragg-edge shift analysis using energy-resolved neutron transmission have been developed, however some issues remain, e.g., imaging efficiency, substance limitation and temperature sensitivity. For this reason, we propose a new neutron thermography using the temperature dependence of inelastic scattering of cold neutrons. This method has some advantages, for example, the imaging efficiency is high because cold neutrons are measured with moderate wavelength resolution, and light elements can be analysed in principle. We investigated the feasibility of this new neutron thermography at pulsed neutron time-of-flight imaging instruments at ISIS in the United Kingdom and HUNS in Japan. A Rietveld-type transmission spectrum analysis program (RITS) was employed to refine temperature and atomic displacement parameters from the inelastic scattering cross-section analysis. Finally, we demonstrated interior thermography of an α-Fe sample of 10 mm thickness inside a vacuum chamber by using a neutron time-of-flight imaging detector at the compact accelerator-driven pulsed neutron source HUNS.
© 2023. The Author(s).