Abstract
Abstract In this paper we review materials characterization techniques using radioactive isotopes at the ISOLDE/CERN facility. At ISOLDE intense beams of chemically clean radioactive isotopes are provided by selective ion-sources and high-resolution isotope separators, which are coupled on-line with particle accelerators. There, new experiments are performed by an increasing number of materials researchers, which use nuclear spectroscopic techniques such as Mössbauer, perturbed angular correlations (PAC), β-NMR and emission channeling with short-lived isotopes not available elsewhere. Additionally, diffusion studies and traditionally non-radioactive techniques as deep level transient spectroscopy, Hall effect and photoluminescence measurements are performed on radioactive doped samples, providing in this way the element signature upon correlation of the time dependence of the signal with the isotope transmutation half-life. Current developments, applications and perspectives of using radioactive ion beams and techniques in solid state and biophysics research are presented with a few examples.
Highlights
Radioactivity and Radioactive Isotopes (RI) are ordinarily present in daily life, contributing directly or indirectly to welfare as well as, to both the applied science and research fields
About 25 years were needed from the first, unsuccessful attempts [44], to develop new “tracer” techniques combining standard electrical or optical measurements - commonly used in semiconductor physics, with the use of radioactive isotopes
The interface between nuclear and solid state physics has always been a fertile ground for discovering new phenomena and attractive applications
Summary
Radioactivity and Radioactive Isotopes (RI) are ordinarily present in daily life, contributing directly or indirectly to welfare as well as, to both the applied science and research fields. Before the Linac, the primary ISOLDE beam is continuously injected into a Penning trap which transforms a continuous (1+) beam to a bunch of cooled ions These are transferred to an Electron Beam Ion Source (EBIS) in order to achieve a charge to mass ratio larger than 1/4.5. Since ever more energetic radioactive beams have a wide range of applications in nuclear and astrophysics research, CERN has recently approved the HIE-ISOLDE upgrade project [16], to be commissioned by 2016 This RIB upgrade contains three major issues: higher energies, improvements in beam quality and flexibility, and higher beam intensities, which require developments in radioisotope selection, improvements in charge breeding and target-ion source development. In this way all ISOLDE beams will be available within a large spectrum of energies, well below and significantly above the Coulomb barrier, boosting a large programme of nuclear structure and nuclear astrophysics studies using different classes of nuclear reactions
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