Small Matters Spring 2026
02 Apr 2026
Welcome to Small Matters, the newsletter of the ISIS Small-Angle Neutron Scattering (SANS) group. This is our first issue for 2026, and we have lots of to update regarding the UK SAS community, our instruments, and recent research. We are pleased to announce that after a successful 2025 meeting, we will be holding this year’s UK Small Angle Scattering user meeting together with the ILL and Diamond Light Source. More news to come later in 2026.
For the most up-to-date news about the UK small-angle scattering community, we have also set up the UK SAS mailing list, and you can sign up for that on JiscMail.
The ISIS direct access proposal system opened on 2 March 2026 for your submissions. You can submit proposals until the deadline of 20 April 2026 at 17:00 UK. The SANS group will be pleased to hear from you and provide advice and assistance if required. Please don’t leave your questions until the week before the deadline!
We at ISIS are also happy to share our new, refreshed website, which went live earlier this month. It was designed with close discussion with staff and the user community to be more intuitive, accessible, user-friendly, and easy to search. There is also a new SANS technique page, and all instruments now include an instrument DOI to reference in publications. We want to ensure that our SANS page contains plenty of useful information for our users, and if there are training resources that you would be interested in, feel free to contact the group leader, Rob Dalgliesh.
If you have any questions, comments or wish to contribute then please contact one of the team. You can find more information about the us on our web pages or contact us by email at SANSgroup@stfc.ac.uk.
Events
UK Small Angle Scattering Users Meeting
The inaugural UK Small Angle Scattering Users Meeting was held at RAL on 16-18 June 2025, hosted jointly by ISIS and Diamond, along with support from the ILL. The meeting featured a great number of interesting presentations using SAS in diverse areas from bioscience to engineering materials and soft matter colloids to magnetism. Attendees were not only from the UK but also The Netherlands, Germany, and the USA. Alongside the presentations, there were plenty of lively discussions about SAS techniques and their applications.
The next UK SAS meeting will again be held at the Rutherford Appleton Laboratory campus later in 2026, and we will be announcing it soon. The science areas include structural biology, biophysics, polymers, rheology, colloids, magnetism and superconductivity, engineering and advanced materials, food science and energy materials.
Integrated Modelling and Scattering for Biomolecules
The University of Sheffield will be hosting a workshop on modelling and scattering from biomolecules and their assemblies from 18-20 May 2026. The meeting welcomes participants from both the scattering and modelling communities, with a shared interest in biomolecules, and will provide an overview both on the recent experimental developments in neutron and X-ray scattering as well as an overview of computational methods.
Abstract submission and registration are both currently open, and more information can be found on the workshop’s website.
Instrument updates
The three TS2 SANS instruments (Larmor, SANS2D, and Zoom) continue to run a full user programme, using a range of sample environments and SANS variants. LoQ is still operational and is predominantly used for rapid measurements and operational tests.
Larmor
A Neutron News article about SESANS reproducibility was recently published with measurements on instruments at various facilities. The article highlights the fact that we can use many different technologies to encode the scattering angle into the neutron polarisation with good agreement. The work was carried out in collaboration with colleagues in TU Delft and at Oak Ridge National Laboratory. For those interested in SESANS, please have a look at DOI: 10.1080/10448632.2025.2468088
For those new to the technique, which can probe structures from the 150 nm to up to 30 micron in size, please feel free to contact and discuss potential experiments with the Larmor team.
SANS2D
The Bio-Logic SFM-4000 is a stopped-flow rapid-mixing device allowing users to perform mixing experiments with a dead time of ~ 2.3 milliseconds. We can combine this with SANS to facilitate in situ time-resolved structural characterisations, and access transient intermediate states and assembly pathways. Typical applications can be found across soft matter including biotechnology, formulations, and material synthesis. We offer to the community an integrated stopped-flow and static mini-sample changer assembly designed to optimise beamtime efficiency and experimental design. The mini-sample changer maintains high thermal stability, offering temperature control equivalent to our standard double-decker sample changers. This configuration allows for a multi-stage approach:
1. Static Characterisation: Preliminary measurements to identify optimal compositions or equilibrium states.
2. Kinetic Analysis: Targeted stopped-flow experiments based on the initial static data.
Zoom
A new sample‑environment platform has been brought into operation on Zoom to simplify the workflow and improve the safety and efficiency for cryogenic and high-field experiments. The purpose-built platform provides stable, waist‑height access, e.g. for a smooth installation of sample sticks and safe handling of activated samples.
The platform also facilitates the operation of our newest sample environment, the orange cryostat for the 3 T shielded HTS magnet. The new kit broadens Zoom’s experimental capabilities for low‑temperature and polarised‑neutron studies.
LoQ
LoQ remains out of the user program due to a lack of staff resources. It is being maintained for sample environment equipment testing and commissioning as well as Xpress measurements and the occasional experiment that cannot be scheduled elsewhere. The data acquisition electronics has recently been upgraded to allow event-mode data acquisition in the same way as all the other SANS instruments at ISIS. This has significantly improved out equipment testing ability and was used to commission the new humidity cell system.
Software Updates
In 2025, Ada was launched, our updated replacement for IDAaaS. The site has been updated with a new appearance and features, while maintaining the ability to access and analyse your data using ISIS provided workspaces. As of April 2026, the old IDAaaS site will be decommissioned, and you should use the new link to access Ada.
Mantid version 6.15.0 was launched in February 2026. This includes performance and stability updates, and there are a few specific changes of interest to the SANS community. The SANS interface now includes new options for generating angular slices in phi, making it easier and quicker to specify regions. The new version also includes a range of improvements for users doing polarised SANS experiments, providing an improved and simpler workflow.
SasView released an update to version 6.1.3 in March 2026. This is a minor release to fix bugs and make minor improvements but includes all the updates from the major update 6.1.0 earlier in the year. This includes new features for size distribution analysis, inclusion of Shape2SAS to construct real space models, and MuMag to extract micromagnetic properties.
Sample Environment Updates
A top-loading “Orange” cryostat is now available for experiments in the 3 T high-temperature superconducting (HTS) magnet. This wet cryogenic system can reach base temperatures of 1.5 Kelvin, allowing users to combine low temperatures with magnetic fields up to 3 Tesla at the sample position.
Users interested in this setup are encouraged to contact the Sample Environment team in advance to discuss experimental requirements.
Recent Publications
You can find publications for the SANS Group instruments on the STFC ePubs website. If you have papers that use ISIS SANS data but are not on ePubs, you can add them by logging into ePubs.
Larmor publications
LoQ publications
SANS2D publications
Zoom publications
