Radioactive isotopes in solid state physics

Abstract

A wide range of solid state physics techniques is using radioactive ion beams, both from on-line and off-line separators. The different techniques can be roughly subdivided into two classes: one, including the hyperfine techniques like Mößbauer spectroscopy (MS), Perturbed Angular Correlation (PAC) spectroscopy, β-NMR and the ion-beam technique of Emission Channeling (EC). They all crucially depend on the availability of radioactive isotopes with very specific decay properties. The second group comprises radio-tracer techniques which combine radioactive probe atoms with conventional semiconductor physics methods like Deep Level Transient Spectroscopy (DLTS), Capacitance Voltage measurements (CV), Hall-effect measurements or Photoluminescence Spectroscopy (PL). They are perfectly feasible without any radioactive probe atom, however, using such isotopes enables the unambiguous chemical identification of impurities. The present paper gives an overview on the potential of nuclear techniques by describing some typical experiments.