Characterisation of thin solid Xe targets

A series of frozen xenon targets of thicknesses ranging between 1 and 15 mg/cm2 were characterised by elastic backscattering technique using a 3 MeV proton beam. Xenon was kept solid on a gold substrate having a thickness of 1 g/cm2 which was mounted on a cold copper finger. The temperature of targets during the experiment was maintained at 55 K by a compact solid nitrogen sublimation system under pressure of 10−5 mbar. Targets were used in series of experiments for populating samarium and gadolinium isotopes in the 136Xe (18O, Xn) and 136Xe (22Ne, Xn) nuclear reactions.