On the release and ionization efficiency of catcher-ion-source systems in isotope separation on-line

Abstract

It is shown that the critical steps in isotope separation on-line - diffusion, effusion, and ionization - can be studied in a very efficient way by stimulating the separation process using beam particles of the UNILAC accelerator as tracer instead of reaction products. The analysis of the measured release profiles readily yields the ionization efficiency and the half-life dependence of the separation efficiency on an absolute scale. For the cases in which surface desorption is a fast process compared to solid state diffusion, additionally the decisive delay parameters μ 0 for diffusion and ν for effusion can be extracted. These are closely related to material constants such as diffusion coefficients and enthalpies for surface adsorption and in favourable cases permit extraction of the Arrhenius coefficients. Thus the assumed release model can be tested by comparison with literature values or, in turn, enables the conversion of known material constants into estimates for the half-life dependence of the separation efficiency. Since ion sources have reached a high degree of sophistication, the ionization efficiency is hardly ever the limiting factor of on-line mass separation. This is in general also true for the diffusion step, if the distribution of the reaction products in the catcher is either homogeneous or very close to the surface. As a consequence it turns out that effusion decisively causes the limitations in mass separation on-line, i.e. surface adsorption for refractory elements and the intrinsic delay for very short half-lives.