Using time-of-flight SESANS to study small volumes of deuterated milk

Casein is the structure-forming protein in milk that is present as self-assembled protein colloids, called micelles; casein micelles are the location of calcium in milk. To study either the whole colloid or interparticle interactions, scattering sensitive to large length scales must be used. Spin-echo SANS (SESANS) is the focus of this proposal; it has advantages for studying food colloids (non-destructive, tolerant of multiple scattering, and real-space scattering data). Existing SESANS data from casein micelles in deuterated milk required a large volume of sample to obtain acceptable signal-to-noise (18 mm!). Preliminary ToF SESANS measurements on LARMOR showed that it can be used to obtain SESANS data using much less material. This suggests that time-of-flight SESANS should be a useful technique for studying relatively weakly scattering samples (weak, for SESANS, at least) using small volumes of samples.