In the next sections we will outline the basics of the neutron techniques of analysis that underpin the chapters that follow. Neutrons have the same principle attributes as photons for the study of a wide range of materials. Neutrons can be diffracted giving information about atomic position, scattered inelastically giving information about atomic (or molecular) motion, and neutrons can be absorbed giving spatial information concerning material composition through radiography and tomography. The instrumentation for photons is well known, but for neutrons there is an almost analogous group of techniques that together cover length scales from fractions of an

A to microns (and up to many centimetres for radiography) and timescales that cover from femtoseconds to hundreds of nanoseconds. The generic properties of neutrons lead to the recurrent use of particular neutron scattering and neutron-based analysis throughout this book, and this section explains the rudiments of these.