A HiCANS neutron reflectometer for small samples and biointerfaces

We discuss a concept for a small-beam neutron reflectometer. Such an instrument may be used to study membrane physics and the structure and interaction of RNA-related phases with membranes. We propose to place such an instrument at one of the new accelerator-based sources, which have inherently smaller beams. These compact neutron sources are based on a high-current linear accelerator (HiCANS). We expect that such a reflectometer can record at least six orders of magnitude in signal to noise. We highlight some recent experiments with lipid membranes to show the potential of the instrument. Furthermore, we discuss instrument concepts.