Ion implanted 3He targets for very low energy experiments

Abstract Helium-3 was implanted into tantalum and aluminum foils at implant energies ranging from 7 to 20 keV and with ion fluences exceeding 10 19 ions/cm 2 for the purpose of producing targets for nuclear reaction experiments. The effects of implant energy, fluence, and temperature on target thickness were studied. The foils were bombarded with deuterons to initiate the 3 He(d,p) 4 He reaction near the 430 keV resonance to determine target thicknesses, thickness lifetimes, and to study the properties of this reaction as a polarization analyzer. Results indicate that these targets can be used in an efficient low-energy polarization analyzer.