Increased interference fringe visibility from the post fabrication heat treatment of a perfect crystal silicon neutron interferometer

TL;DR

This study demonstrates that post-fabrication annealing of silicon neutron interferometers at 800°C significantly enhances interference fringe visibility and Bragg plane alignment, potentially improving fabrication processes and device performance.

Contribution

The paper introduces annealing as an effective method to improve fringe visibility and crystal alignment in silicon neutron interferometers, reducing reliance on extensive chemical etching.

Findings

Fringe visibility increased from 23% to 90% after annealing.

Bragg plane misalignments were reduced post-annealing.

Annealing can salvage interferometers with low initial visibility.

Abstract

Construction of silicon neutron interferometers requires a perfect crystal silicon ingot (5 cm to 30 cm long) be machined such that Bragg diffracting "blades" protrude from a common base. Leaving the interferometer blades connected to the same base preserves Bragg plane alignment, but if the interferometer contains crystallographic misalignments of greater than about 10 nrad between the blades, interference fringe visibility begins to suffer. Additionally, the parallelism, thickness, and distance between the blades must be machined to micron tolerances. Traditionally, interferometers do not exhibit usable interference fringe visibility until 30 $\mu$m to 60 $\mu$m of machining surface damage is chemically etched away. However, if too much material is removed, the uneven etch rates across the interferometer cause the shape of the crystal blades to be outside of the required tolerances. As a result, the ultimate interference fringe visibility varies widely among neutron interferometers that are created under similar conditions. We find that annealing a previously etched interferometer at $800^\circ \mathrm{C}$ dramatically increased interference fringe visibility from 23 % to 90 %. The Bragg plane misalignments were also measured before and after annealing using neutron rocking curve interference peaks, showing that Bragg plane alignment was improved across the interferometer after annealing. This suggests that current interferometers with low fringe visibility may be salvageable and that annealing may become an important step in the fabrication process of future neutron interferometers, leading to less need for chemical etching and larger, more exotic neutron interferometers.