Diffraction enhancement of small effects affecting a neutron undergoing Laue diffraction at Bragg angles θ B close to 90° is predicted and experimentally observed. The enhancement is due to the delay of the neutron inside the crystal during diffraction and is proportional to tan2 θ B. As a result, the diffraction enhancement factor may be as large as ∼ 108-109. On this basis, a new method is proposed for searching for the electric charge of the neutron and for measuring the ratio of its inertial mass m i to the gravitational mass m G . It is shown that the accuracy of the neutron charge measurement can be improved by more than two orders of magnitude in relation to the present-day accuracy and that the ratio m i /m G can be measured to an precision of σ(m i /m G) ∼ 10-6. © 2009 Pleiades Publishing, Ltd.