Isotope production and target preparation for nuclear astrophysics data

Laboratory of Radiochemistry, Nuclear Energy and Safety Research Department, Paul Scherrer Institute, 5232 Villigen PSI, Switzerland

Published online: 13 September 2017

Abstract

Targets are in many cases an indispensable ingredient for successful experiments aimed to produce nuclear data. With the recently observed shift to study nuclear reactions on radioactive targets, this task can become extremely challenging. Concerted actions of a certain number of laboratories able to produce isotopes and manufacture radioactive targets are urgently needed. We present here some examples of successful isotope and target production at PSI, in particular the production of ⁶⁰Fe samples used for half-life measurements and neutron capture cross section experiments, the chemical processing and fabrication of lanthanide targets for capture cross section experiments at n_TOF (European Organization for Nuclear Research (CERN), Switzerland) as well as the recently performed manufacturing of highly-radioactive ⁷Be targets for the measurement of the ⁷Be(n,α)⁴He cross section in the energy range of interest for the Big-Bang nucleosynthesis contributing to the solving of the cosmological Li-problem. The two future projects: “Determination of the half-life and experiments on neutron capture cross sections of ⁵³Mn” and “³²Si – a new chronometer for nuclear dating” are briefly described. Moreover, we propose to work on the establishment of a dedicated network on isotope and target producing laboratories.