Abstract
Abstract Four different techniques were applied for the production of 233U alpha recoil ion sources, providing 229Th ions. They were compared with respect to a minimum energy spread of the 229Th recoil ions, using the emitted alpha particles as an indicator. The techniques of Molecular Plating, Drop-on-Demand inkjet printing, chelation from dilute nitric acid solution on chemically functionalized silicon surfaces, and self-adsorption on passivated titanium surfaces were used. All fabricated sources were characterized by using alpha spectrometry, radiographic imaging, and scanning electron microscopy. A direct validation for the estimated recoil ion rate was obtained by collecting 228Th recoil ions from 232U recoil ion sources prepared by self-adsorption and Molecular Plating. The chelation and the self-adsorption based approaches appear most promising for the preparation of recoil ion sources delivering monochromatic recoil ions.
Highlights
Radioactive sources of alpha-decaying or spontaneously fissioning radionuclides are used in many experiments in nuclear chemistry and nuclear physics as a source for their daughter nuclei
After 24 h, the solution was carefully removed with a pipette and the titanium foil was rinsed with distilled water and dried under an IR lamp
Simulations performed with Alpha spectrometric Simulations (AASI) helped to understand the effects of different source characteristics like layer thickness, roughness, homogeneity and chemical species on the 233U alpha spectrum
Summary
Radioactive sources of alpha-decaying or spontaneously fissioning radionuclides are used in many experiments in nuclear chemistry and nuclear physics as a source for their daughter nuclei. In alpha-decaying recoil ion sources, the daughter nuclei are emitted from thin active layers owing to the short residual range of the daughters in matter. Such recoil ion sources were recently used in physics experiments, e.g., for investigations of the nuclear clock isomer 229mTh [1,2,3] and for optimizations of the extraction of shortlived isotopes in buffer gas cells [4, 5]. The 233U is used as example nuclide in the source fabrication, as it is of high current interest due to the production of 229mTh and will be used as a recoil ion source in the experiment of the TACTICa 1 collaboration [6,7,8]. Due to the approximately fixed areal density of a monolayer, the activity of such an ion source is defined by the active area
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