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In the course of their day, sample environment professionals can be confronted by numerous technical challenges applicable to a range of scientific questions. This paper presents three successful outcomes from user-posed sample environment challenges for in situ neutron scattering experiments undertaken at the Australian Centre for Neutron Scattering (formerly the Bragg Institute). The sample environments presented here have nothing in common other than their novelty. They may not be the best solution but have been constrained by time, resources and ability. The questions the users posed were: Can we mount a cylinder in cylinder (CIC) rheometer, more regularly used on a small angle scattering instrument, on a diffraction instrument and obtain usable data? Can we supply high-voltage (up to 10 kV) across a sample within the Paris-Edinburgh press while mounted on a powder diffraction instrument? And finally can a Lakeshore 340 and an in-house built liquid conductivity cell do the job of a commercial liquid conductivity meter? This paper presents the engineering and equipment solutions that were used to answer these questions, and in each case the scientific users left with useful, intriguing and, hopefully, publishable data. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Abstract In this paper we report the resistivity and neutron scattering experiments on Nd 3 Co 4 Sn 13. These results indicate that Nd 3 Co 4 Sn 13 undergoes a structural distortion from a high-temperature primitive cubic unit cell to an I -centered superstructure and a concomitant doubling of the lattice constant. The P m -3 n structure of Yb 3 Rh 4 Sn 13 describes well the neutron powder diffraction pattern collected at room temperature, but failed to fit the low–temperature profiles due to the presence of (h /2 k /2 l)-type diffraction peaks. Single crystal elastic neutron scattering performed in the [ h h l ] scattering plane shows the lattice distortion with mean field character at 124 (2) K as the temperature is lowered. Besides, three I -centered space groups are excluded by the single crystal diffraction work, including I -4 3 d symmetry which is observed in other R 3 T 4 Sn 13 compounds. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]